William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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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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.
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O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.
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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.
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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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The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.
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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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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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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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The falcon cannot hear the falconer
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Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.
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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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How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?
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And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
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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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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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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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All the stream that's roaring by Came out of a needle's eye.
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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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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
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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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rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.
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for never yet Has lover lived, but longed to wive Like them that are no more alive.