William Butler Yeats Quotes

“There's keen delight in what we have:The rattle of pebbles on the shoreUnder the receding wave.”

“Hammer your thoughts into unity.”

“Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

“There where the course is,Delight makes all of the one mind,The riders upon the galloping horses,The crowd that closes in behind.”

“But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?”

“What can books of men that wiveIn a dragon-guarded land,Paintings of the dolphin-drawnSea-nymphs in their pearly wagonsDo, but awake a hope to live...?”

“Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.”

“I cast my heart into my rhymes,That you, in the dim coming times,May know how my heart went with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.”

“Why should the imagination of a manLong past his prime remember things that areEmblematical of love and war?”

“Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.”

“Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.”

“Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.”

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,Those undreamt accidents that have made meSeeing that Fame has perished this long while,Being but a part of ancient ceremonyNotorious, till all my priceless thingsAre but a post the passing dogs defile.”

“Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.”

“How can they knowTruth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,And there alone, that have no solitude?So the crowd come they care not what may come.They have loud music, hope every day renewedAnd heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.”

“I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'”

“The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.”

“I long for truth, and yetI cannot stay from thatMy better self disowns,For a man's attentionBrings such satisfactionTo the craving in my bones.”

“Education is not filling”

“I have mummy truths to tellWhereat the living mock,Though not for sober ear,For maybe all that hearShould laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.”

“Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.”

“O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.”

“I weave the shoes of Sorrow:Soundless shall be the footfall lightIn all men's ears of Sorrow,Sudden and light.”

“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”