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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A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.
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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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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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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
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If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.
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In life courtesy and self-possession, and in the arts style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind, for both arise out of a deliberate shaping of all things and from never being swept away, whatever the emotion into confusion or dullness.
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Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
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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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Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
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It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
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We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.
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Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
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The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
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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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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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BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.
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I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
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Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.
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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
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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 age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.
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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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There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.