William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
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When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
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I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.
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Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
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THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.
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You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
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This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.
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Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
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Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
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You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?
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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.
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The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness.
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The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
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All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one.
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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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Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.
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Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity.
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O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.
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I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
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Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
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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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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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I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.
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Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.