William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 19

Quotes about:

• A speckled cat and a tame hare
  Eat at my hearthstone
  And sleep there;
  And both look up to me alone
  For learning and defence
  As I look up to Providence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sleep, Cat, Responsibility

  William Butler Yeats, Glenn Harrington (2002). “William Butler Yeats”, p.40, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sad, Lonely, Heart

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.542, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Extravagance, Tests

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

  William Butler Yeats

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Air, Soul, London

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran (1969). “John Sherman & Dhoya”

  8 Copy quote

• I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

  William Butler Yeats

  Art, Thinking, Censorship

  Speech at Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate) on the Censorship of Films Bill, June 07, 1923.

  7 Copy quote

• Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

  William Butler Yeats

  Growing Up, Shapes, Toes

  Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 5

  7 Copy quote

• But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

  William Butler Yeats

  Dog, Fleas

  1909 'To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine', complete poem. Collected in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910).

  11 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  God, Time, Oxen

  Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Reading, Pride

  7 Copy quote

• The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

  William Butler Yeats

  Christian, Passion, Writing

  William Butler Yeats (1955). “Letters”

  9 Copy quote

• How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

  William Butler Yeats

  Girl, War, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.356, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

  William Butler Yeats

  Swimming, Mermaid, Body

  William Butler Yeats, “A Man Young And Old”

  4 Copy quote

• How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?

  William Butler Yeats

  Innocence, Born, Ceremony

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.478, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

  William Butler Yeats

  Growing Up, Pain, Men

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

  62 Copy quote

• An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

  William Butler Yeats

  Thinking, Wind, Hatred

  Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "A Prayer for My Daughter"

  7 Copy quote

• A thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

  William Butler Yeats

  Death, Heart, Speech

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Player, Stage

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.181

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• I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

  William Butler Yeats

  Clothes, Soul, Naked

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.235, Wordsworth Editions

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• I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

  William Butler Yeats

  Death, Fashion, Prayer

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.

  William Butler Yeats

  Numbers, Long, Giving

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiogra”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

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• If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

  William Butler Yeats

  Poetry, Limits, Poet

  Alexander Norman Jeffares, William Butler Yeats (1984). “A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats”, Palgrave Schol, Print UK

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• Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.

  William Butler Yeats

  Small Rooms, World, May

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.110, Wordsworth Editions

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• I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.

  William Butler Yeats

  Song, Eye, Fool

  "A Coat" l. 8 (1914)

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• I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

  William Butler Yeats

  Children, Hands, Law

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.138, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

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