William Butler Yeats Quotes
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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
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The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
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There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
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Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.
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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
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I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
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Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
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How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
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There is only one romance the Soul's.
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Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Breed out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
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What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.
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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
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Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer
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Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.
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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.
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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.
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There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind.
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It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
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Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.
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Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.
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Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
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Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.