William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.
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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love
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All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
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The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.
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Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease.
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Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.
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Boughs have their fruit and blossom At all times of the year; Rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer.
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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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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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Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
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The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ.
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Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.
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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?
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
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I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.
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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.
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We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.
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While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.
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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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There is only one romance the Soul's.
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But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
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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.