William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.
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And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
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Who mocks at music mocks at love.
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A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied.
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Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.
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Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.
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What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.
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And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.
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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
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Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
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I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.
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If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.
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And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly.
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It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
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My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.
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I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?
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No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.
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Where there is nothing, there is God.
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I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
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An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?
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For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.
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But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.