William Butler Yeats Quotes
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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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 empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.
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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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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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I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
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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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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 women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.
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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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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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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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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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He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.
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Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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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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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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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
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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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Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
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Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by
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If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.