William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.
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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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Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
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A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.
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The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
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I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?
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A thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech.
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Love comes in at the eye.
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What can be explained is not poetry.
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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
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Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
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What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?
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If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?
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Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk
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O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.
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Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
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I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
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...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face...
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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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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
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I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
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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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This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.