William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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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All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?
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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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A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought.
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Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
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My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
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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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Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
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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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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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If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?
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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 that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.
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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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We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
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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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All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.
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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
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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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An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.
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We all to some extent meet again and again the same people and certainly in some cases form a kind of family of two or three or more persons who come together life after life until all passionate relations are exhausted, the child of one life the husband, wife, brother, sister of the next. Sometimes, however, a single relationship will repeat itself, turning its revolving wheel again and again.
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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.