William Butler Yeats Quotes
Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
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 women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.
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.
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
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.
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack.
Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
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.
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.
What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.
I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
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.
Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.
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.
There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
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.
The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away.
Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.
I had this thought a while ago, "My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land." And I grew weary of the sun
The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeler.
Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.
All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one.
The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness.
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.
All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.
I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.
All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will
For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
