William Butler Yeats Quotations | Page 2

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children's children shall say they have lied.

Hands, do what you're bid;Bring the balloon of the mindThat bellies and drags in the windInto its narrow shed.

I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He's had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youthOr an old man upon a winter's night.

It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always be having arguments.

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other; and in this case to understand is to love.

It is not permitted to a man who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

Irish poets, learn your trade,Sing whatever is well made.

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start.

Others because you did not keepThat deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;Yet always when I look death in the face,When I clamber to the heights of sleep,Or when I grow excited with wine,Suddenly I meet your face.

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. . . .

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.

That William BlakeWho beat upon the wallTill Truth obeyed his call.

I would mould a world of fire and dew.

When such as I cast out remorseSo great a sweetness flows into the breastWe must laugh and we must sing,We are blest by everything,Everything we look upon is blest.

You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;And they are lonely that must keep the watch.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,That long to give themselves for wage,To shake their wicked sides at youthRestraining reckless middle age?

Who can tell the dancer from the dance?

Well, to see rightly is the whole of wisdom, whatever dream be with us.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,The heart's grown brutal from the fare.

Time drops in decay,Like a candle burnt out,And the mountains and woodsHave their day, have their day;

Time drops in decay, Like a candle burnt out, And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day;

Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

To be born woman is to know -- although they do not speak of it at school -- women must labor to be beautiful.

Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth, Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

Time to put off the world and go somewhereAnd find my health again in the sea air,"Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,"And make my soul before my pate is bare.

Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.

Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.

We . . . are no petty people. We are of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

Who stole your wits awayAnd where are they gone?

We were the last romantics -- chose for themeTraditional sanctity and loveliness.

The Government does not intend these things to happen, the Commission on whose report the Bill was founded did not intend these things to happen, but in legislation intention is nothing, and the letter of the law everything, and no government has the

Though leaves are many, the root is one;Through all the lying days of my youthI swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;Now I may wither into the truth.

TOIL and grow rich, what's that but to lie with a foul witch and after, drained dry, to be brought to the chamber where lies one long sought with despair.

What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?

Bred to a harder thingThan Triumph, turn awayAnd like a laughing stringWhereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone,Be secret and exult,Because of all things knownThat is most difficult.

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is;All mere complexities,The fury and the mire of human veins.

Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?

An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born

I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.

I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown.

It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know.

Things said or done long years ago,Or things I did not do or sayBut thought that I might say or do,Weigh me down, and not a dayBut something is recalled,My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

The things that have been told us in our childhoodAre not so fragile.

See how the sacred old flamingoes come,Painting with shadow all the marble steps:Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perchesWithin the temple, devious walking, madeTo wander by their melancholy minds.

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave

Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.

Style, personality -- deliberately adopted and therefore a mask -- is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.

Speak, speak, for underneath the cover thereThe sand is running from the upper glass,And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost.

Speak, speak, for underneath the cover there The sand is running from the upper glass, And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost.

One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass cannot keep the form where the mountain hare has lain.

And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.

A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intent;But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of excrement;For nothing can be sole or wholeThat has not been rent.

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

Think like a wise man but express yourself like the common people.

A man who does not exist,A man who is but a dream.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will.

You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a plague when I was young;What else have I to spur me into song?

Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.

Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire.

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.

That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees --Those dying generations -- at their song.

Swift has sailed into his rest;Savage indignation thereCannot lacerate his breast.

Once more the storm is howling, and half hidUnder this cradle-hood and coverlidMy child sleeps on.

The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

The last stroke of midnight dies.All day in the one chairFrom dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have rangedIn rambling talk with an image of air:Vague memories, nothing but memories.

Their hearts are wild,As be the hearts of birds, till children come.

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

The fascination of what's difficultHas dried the sap out of my veins, and rentSpontaneous joy and natural contentOut of my heart.

I have passed with a nod of the headOr polite meaningless words,Or have lingered awhile and saidPolite meaningless words. . . .

In Imagination only we find a Human Faculty that touches nature at one side, and spirit on the other. Imagination may be described as that which is sent bringing spirit to nature, entering into nature, and seemingly losing its spirit, that nature being revealed as symbol may lose the power to delude.

I have no question:It is enough, I know what fixed the stationOf star and cloud.And knowing all, I cry. . . .

If you believe in God,You are my soul's one friend.

I hear the wind a blowI hear the grass a grow,And all that I know, I know.But I will not speak, I will run away.

I hear the wind a blow I hear the grass a grow, And all that I know, I know. But I will not speak, I will run away.

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .I hear it in the deep heart's core.

In wise love each defines the secret self of the other, and refusing to believe in the mere daily self, creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life; for love also creates the Mask.

Civilization is hoped together, brought under a rule, under the semblance of peace by manifold illusion, but Man's life is thought, and he, despite his terror, cannot cease, ravening through century after century ravening, raging and uprooting, that

But where's the wild dog that has praised his fleas?

Because I am mad about womenI am mad about the hills,"Said that wild old wicked manWho travels where God wills. . . .

If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made.

I at midnight by the clock may creep into your bed.

I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magic illusions in the visions of truth in the depths of the minds when the eyes are closed.

I call on those that call me son,Grandson, or great-grandson,On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,To judge what I have done.Have I, that put it into words,Spoilt what old loins have sent?

Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I drink my fill.

All changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls now;Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

The folly that man doesOr must suffer, if he woosA proud woman not kindred of his soul.

The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.

The friends that have it I do wrongWhen ever I remake a song,Should know what issue is at stake:It is myself that I remake.