William Butler Yeats Quotes
-
He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.
-
Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
-
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!
-
What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
-
Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.
-
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
-
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.
-
Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
-
I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away... and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.
-
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.
-
A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied.
-
A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.
-
I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
-
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.
-
Everything in nature is resurrection.
-
Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
-
The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.
-
I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?
-
Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.
-
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
-
... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
-
My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.
-
Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit; I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.
-
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.