William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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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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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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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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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on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
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Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.
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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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Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery; And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.
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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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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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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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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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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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My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.
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In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
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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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Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
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We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.
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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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What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
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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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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.