William Butler Yeats Quotes
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The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.
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Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.
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Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.
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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
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If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
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Ah, let us kiss each other's eyes,/And laugh our love away.
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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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A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
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Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
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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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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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For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.
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How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
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An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
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The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away
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We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
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Words alone are certain good.
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Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.
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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
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It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
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It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.
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All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?