WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS QUOTES
Irish poet (1865-1939)
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Brown Penny"
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Municipal Gallery Re-Visited"
It is love that I am seeking for,
But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind
That is not in the world.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Shadowy Waters
I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Sailing to Byzantium"
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.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"A Drinking Song", The Green Helmet and Other Poems
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Easter, 1916
The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Where There Is Nothing
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Spur", Last Poems
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Celtic Twilight
Life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Reveries over Childhood and Youth
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Down by the Salley Gardens", Crossways
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Second Coming"
In dreams begin responsibilities.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Responsibilities and Other Poems
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Celtic Twilight
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"A Dialogue of Self and Soul", The Winding Stair and Other Poems
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the disheveled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Land of Heart's Desire
We sat grown quiet at the name of love.
We saw the last embers of daylight die
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Adam's Curse", In the Seven Woods