William Butler Yeats Quotes

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 Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again.

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

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.

All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?

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

Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk

yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, But the torn petals strew the garden plot; And there's but common greenness after that.

Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...

Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

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?

Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.

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

There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

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.

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.

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

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.

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.

I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.

Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.

Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.

Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.

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.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.

O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.

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?

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

There's keen delight in what we have: The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.

The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.

... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?

We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.

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.

In dreams begin responsibilitiy.

An intellectual hate is the worst.

What can I but enumerate old themes?

For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.

Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.