William Butler Yeats Quotes

"A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught."

"A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love."

"A shudder in the loins engenders there the broken wall, the burning roof and tower and Agamemnon dead."

"A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent; but love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement; for nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent."

"Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away."

"An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress."

"Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation."

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry."

"Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill."

"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

"Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought."

"Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before."

"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing."

"I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor."

"I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead."

"I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death."

"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."

"I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher."

"I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots."

"I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'"

"I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."

"I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right."

"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."

"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera."

"Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top."

"It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure.""

"Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."

"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

"My country is Kiltartan Cross; my countrymen Kiltartan's poor."

"Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all."

"Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."

"Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart."

"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."

"Swift has sailed into his rest; savage indignation there cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, world-besotted traveller; he served human liberty."

"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round."

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

"The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth."

"The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time."

"The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark."

"The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone."

"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."

"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."

"The years like great black oxen tread the world,And God, the herdsman goads them on behind,And I am broken by their passing feet."

"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

"Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."

"This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air."

"Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."

"To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful."

"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?"

"We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us."

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

"When you are old and gray 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."

"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself."

"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses."

"You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements."

"You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends."

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