William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.
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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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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
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Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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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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All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
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For how can you compete Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbour's eyes?
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I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
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Where there is nothing, there is God.
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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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Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
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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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I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.
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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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Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.
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One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
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When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
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It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
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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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Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.
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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 pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.