William Butler Yeats Quotes
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.
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Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
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Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
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The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
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When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things.
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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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O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
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Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
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This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
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Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude.
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I say that Roger Casement Did what he had to do, He died upon the gallows But that is nothing new.
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The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.
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This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.
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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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We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.
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Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.
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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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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
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To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.
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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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And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.
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I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.
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Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.