William Butler Yeats Quotes
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In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.
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"Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea." The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days.
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What can I but enumerate old themes?
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Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
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Time can but make her beauty over again.
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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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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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I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again.
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The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored; Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.
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Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
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I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
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The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
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The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
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All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.
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The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
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Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead
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The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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I can exchange opinion with any neighbouring mind, I have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer's had, But O! my Heart could bear no more when the upland caught the wind; I ran, I ran, from my love's side because my Heart went mad.
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It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
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We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.