William Butler 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.

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

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.

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

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

In dreams begin responsibilitiy.

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

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.

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

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

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

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.

Hammer your thoughts into unity.

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.

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

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

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

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.

There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

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.

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

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!

Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

An intellectual hate is the worst.

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.

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

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

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

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

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?