William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.
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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
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We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.
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Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
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Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.
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Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end.
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How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is
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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.
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It is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind That is not in the world.
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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
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Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O Never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
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A lonely impulse of delight
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Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.
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We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.
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I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent
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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
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on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
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All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
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From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
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The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
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Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.