William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 16

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• Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  William Butler Yeats

  Sleep, Twenties, Lasts

  "The Second Coming" l. 18 (1921)

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• The falcon cannot hear the falconer

  William Butler Yeats

  Falling Apart, Anarchy, Things Fall Apart Important

  "The Second Coming" l. 1 (1921)

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• O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Folly, Turns

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Dark, Men

  Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1932"

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• Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
  And the winds that blow through the starry ways,
  Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
  Cover over and hide, for he has no part
  With the lonely, majestical multitude.

  William Butler Yeats

  Lonely, Nature, Fear

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.

  William Butler Yeats

  Horse, Sea, Names

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
  Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
  My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.

  William Butler Yeats

  Swings, Black, Green

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.113

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Marriage, Real, Despair

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.132, Library of Alexandria

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• All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

  William Butler Yeats

  Memories, Soul, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.347, Simon and Schuster

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• What can books of men that wive
  In a dragon-guarded land,
  Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
  Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
  Do, but awake a hope to live...?

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Hope, Art

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

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• I bear a burden that might well try
  Men that do all by rule,
  And what can I
  That am a wandering-witted fool
  But pray to God that He ease
  My great responsibilities?

  William Butler Yeats

  Faith, Responsibility, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.127, Library of Alexandria

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• 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

  Fashion, Song, Loss

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.67, Wordsworth Editions

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• All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Tears, Sticks, Gone

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

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• Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
  I had a beautiful friend
  And dreamed that the old despair
  Would end in love in the end.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beautiful, Hope, Hands

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

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• People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.

  William Butler Yeats

  People, Opinion, Moral

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• yet it seems
  Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
  Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
  But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
  And there's but common greenness after that.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Morning, Garden

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

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• Even the wisest man grows tense
  With some sort of violence
  Before he can accomplish fate,
  Know his work or choose his mate.
  
  Poet and sculptor, do the work,
  Nor let the modish painter shirk

  William Butler Yeats

  Wisdom, Art, Fate

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.334, Simon and Schuster

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• Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Children, Hands, Water

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Life, Dream

  The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Pity of Love"

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• A passion-driven exultant man sings out
  Sentences that he has never thought.

  William Butler Yeats

  Passion, Men, Driven

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.247, Wordsworth Editions

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• I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Ambition, Lakes

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

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• "Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
  That he may fight the horses of the sea."
  The Druids took them to their mystery,
  And chaunted for three days.

  William Butler Yeats

  Horse, Fighting, Sea

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Men, Frogs

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

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• What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?

  William Butler Yeats

  Girl, Death, Pretty Girl

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.342, Simon and Schuster

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• Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

  William Butler Yeats

  Blood, Wings, Bravery

  "September, 1913" l. 7 (1914)

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