William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
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Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
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Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
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All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.
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For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?
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What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?
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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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All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.
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Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
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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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My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.
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Words alone are certain good.
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We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
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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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A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
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God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.
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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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I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit.
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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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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.
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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
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An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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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.