William Butler Yeats Quotes
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There is only one romance the Soul's.
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I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.
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Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher, Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.
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One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
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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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Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
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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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for never yet Has lover lived, but longed to wive Like them that are no more alive.
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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.
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His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
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Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy.
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We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
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As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.
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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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Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.
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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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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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All the stream that's roaring by Came out of a needle's eye.
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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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What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
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Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
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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?
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer