William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 5 of 12

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

. . . you may think I waste my breath Pretending that there can be passion That has more life in it than death

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

And many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.

• William Butler Yeats / Poet

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