William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
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Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
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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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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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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
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I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.
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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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Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
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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 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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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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I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.
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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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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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The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
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Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.
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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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Where there is nothing, there is God.
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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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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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 always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
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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.