William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 8

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• Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

  William Butler Yeats

  Imagination, Doe, Losing

  'The Tower' pt. 2

  5 Copy quote

• The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.

  William Butler Yeats

  Good Luck, Long, House

  William Butler Yeats (2007). “The Celtic Twilight”, p.18, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

• Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .

  William Butler Yeats

  Taken, Sleep, Moon

  William Butler Yeats (2016). “The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats”, p.57, William Butler Yeats

  8 Copy quote

• Man's life is thought,
  And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
  Ravening through century after century,
  Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
  Into the desolation of reality.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Men, Thinking

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.151

  7 Copy quote

• I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beautiful, Dream, College

  William Butler Yeats (1954). “The Letters of W.B. Yeats”

  11 Copy quote

• Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

  William Butler Yeats

  Lying, Heart, Rags

  Last Poems (1939) "The Circus Animals' Desertion" pt. 3

  13 Copy quote

• We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.

  William Butler Yeats

  Moving, Self, Cities

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Poetry, Bed

  11 Copy quote

• Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, History, Finding Yourself

  22 Copy quote

• I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Blessed, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• The chief imagination of Christendom,
  Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself
  That he has made that hollow face of his
  More plain to the mind's eye than any face
  But that of Christ.

  William Butler Yeats

  Eye, Imagination, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.135, Wordsworth Editions

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  God, Purple, Care

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.116, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

  William Butler Yeats

  Wedding, Stars, Memories

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Body, Tranquility

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.174, Wordsworth Editions

  11 Copy quote

• The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all

  William Butler Yeats

  Blessed, Self, Spirit

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• All through the years of our youth
  Neither could have known
  Their own thought from the other's,
  We were so much at one.

  William Butler Yeats

  Years, Unity, Lovers

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

  8 Copy quote

• I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.

  William Butler Yeats

  Believe, Men, Swings

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

  33 Copy quote

• All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Art, Essence, Purpose

  8 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Summer, Heart, Winter

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.153, Wordsworth Editions

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• Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.

  William Butler Yeats

  Past, Disrespect, Catholic

  9 Copy quote

• ... What matter, so there is but fire
  In you, in me?

  William Butler Yeats

  Passion, Fire, What Matters

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.77, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Butterfly, Eye, Garden

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.144, Wordsworth Editions

  11 Copy quote

• Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sun, Virtue

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.81, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• I had a chair at every hearth,
  When no one turned to see,
  With 'Look at that old fellow there,
  'And who may he be?

  William Butler Yeats

  Age, May, Looks

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.136, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  God, Running, Nature

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

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