William Butler Yeats Quotes

“And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,That dying chose the living world for textAnd never could have rested in the tombBut that, long travelling, he had comeTowards nightfall upon certain set apartIn a most desolate stony place.”

“The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.”

“How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.”

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

“evenThe bed of love, that in the imaginationHad seemed to be the giver of all peace,Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,And as soon finished.”

“Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.”

“Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.”

“... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.”

“When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.”

“but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.”

“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?”

“Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.”

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

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

“Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.”

“Laughter not time destroyed my voiceAnd put that crack in it,And when the moon's pot-belliedI get a laughing fit.”

“No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.”

“John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.”

“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.”

“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 kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.”

“Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.”

“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.”

“Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted,Their heads being turned with praise and flattery;And that is why their lovers are afraidTo tell them a plain story.”

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