William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
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May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
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One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.
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I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul
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The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.
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The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.
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The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.
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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
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Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.
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Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
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All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it
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Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
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All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
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Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
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He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.
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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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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?
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Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by
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Myself I must remake.