William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeatswas an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1865
CitySandymount, Ireland
CountryIreland
When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance?
The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before
we can make our minds so still like water. That beings gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer perhaps even with a fiercer life because of silence.
What do you think of when alone at night?Do not the things your mothers spoke about,Before they took the candle from the bedside,Rush up into the mind and master it,Till you believe in them against your will?
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
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.
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.
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.
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.