William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.
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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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It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.
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What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?
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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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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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"Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea." The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days.
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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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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
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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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I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.
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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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I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
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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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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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Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
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Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
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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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Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
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Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .
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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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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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While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.
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And many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.