William Butler Yeats Quotes

“I have nothing but the embittered sun;Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,And now that I have come to fifty yearsI must endure the timid sun.”

“I know, although when looks meetI tremble to the bone,The more I leave the door unlatchedThe sooner love is gone.”

“When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.”

“rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.”

“The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.”

“My curse on playsThat have to be set up in fifty ways,On the day's war with every knave and dolt,Theater business, management of men.”

“Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”

“Some burn damp faggots, others may consumeThe entire combustible world in one small roomAs though dried straw, and if we turn aboutThe bare chimney is gone black outBecause the work had finished in that flare.”

“Now must we sing and sing the best we can,But first you must be told your character:Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.”

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

“Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

“Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,Amid the rustle of his planted hills,Life overflows without ambitious pains;And rains down life until the basin spills,And mounts more dizzy high the more it rainsAs though to choose whatever shape it wills.”

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“But O, sick children of the world,Of all the many changing thingsIn dreary dancing past us whirled,To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,Words alone are certain good.”

“An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?”

“The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.”

“An intellectual hatred is the worst.”

“It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.”

“It seems to me that true love is a discipline.”

“Words alone are certain good.”

“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.”

“Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.”

“I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.”

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”

“Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.”