"A poet is a good citizen turned..." - Quote by William Butler Yeats

“Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?”

“What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.”

“A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.”

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”

“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.”

“He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.”

“Music is the melody whose text is the world.”

“People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it.”

“I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.”