William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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.
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Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by
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What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
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And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.
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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
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What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
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I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.
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Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
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Education is not filling
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What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
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And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
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When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
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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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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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For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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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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I know of the leafy paths that the witches take Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake.
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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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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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When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
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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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A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into the Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.