William Butler Yeats Quotes
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For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
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A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.
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Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
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A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
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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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O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
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And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
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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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I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.
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Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.
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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.
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I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
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The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
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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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The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeler.
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I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
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Where there is nothing, there is God.
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No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.
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Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit.
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I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.
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Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.
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O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more.