William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 20

Quotes about:

Age Aging Anarchy Angels Animals Art Balance

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

William Butler Yeats

Wisdom, Song, Art

William Butler Yeats (2011). “The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose”, p.206, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

William Butler Yeats

Time, Oxen, Behinds

Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4

7 Copy quote
He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Wings, Dread

William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.332, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.

William Butler Yeats

Morning, Children, Flower

4 Copy quote
Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

William Butler Yeats

Poet, Shirk, Painter

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

16 Copy quote
It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

William Butler Yeats

Plato, Eye, Imagination

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.418, Hayes Barton Press

7 Copy quote
There is no release
In a bodkin or disease,
Nor can there be a work so great
As that which cleans man's dirty slate.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Art, Dirty

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.179

4 Copy quote
O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.

William Butler Yeats

Heart, Poetry, Sake

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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

William Butler Yeats

Happiness, Sweet, Poetry

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Swans, Mirrors

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.177, Wordsworth Editions

4 Copy quote
I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.

William Butler Yeats

Mother, Heart, Womb

'Remorse for Intemperate Speech'

10 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
Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

William Butler Yeats

Wind, Mind, Burden

William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, Jared R. Curtis (2007). “The Tower (1928): Manuscript Materials”

6 Copy quote
O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

William Butler Yeats

Rogues, Fine, Worst

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.175, Wordsworth Editions

7 Copy quote
It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

William Butler Yeats

Fall, Needs, Adam

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.64, Wordsworth Editions

4 Copy quote
Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Night, Garden

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.179, Wordsworth Editions

4 Copy quote
Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.

William Butler Yeats

Lying, Eye, Saving

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives.

William Butler Yeats

Men, What Matters, Age

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.703, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
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
Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Men, Giving

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.431, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.

William Butler Yeats

Sea, Evil, Spy

William Butler Yeats, Colton Johnson (2000). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol X: Later Articles and Reviews: Uncollected Articles, Reviews, and Radio Broadcasts Written After 1900”, p.225, Simon and Schuster

12 Copy quote
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart.

William Butler Yeats

Dream, Truth, Heart

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.142, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

William Butler Yeats

Rose, Proud, Red

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.23, Wordsworth Editions

4 Copy quote
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

William Butler Yeats

Truth, Lying, Men

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.239, 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

You May Also Like:

Jack Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

Follow

Born: June 13, 1865
Died: January 28, 1939
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics