William Butler Yeats Quotes
-
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.
-
How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
-
Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul
-
I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
-
When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
-
For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
-
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.
-
I have nothing more to give you than my heart. Spanish saying Hearts are not to be had as a gift hearts are to be earned.
-
Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.
-
He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.
-
I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
-
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!
-
And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
-
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
-
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?
-
To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.
-
My wretched dragon is perplexed.
-
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
-
I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?
-
Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
-
Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.