William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 9

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• The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

  William Butler Yeats

  Wise, Angel, Godly

  The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) p. 12

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• Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.

  William Butler Yeats

  Personality, Style, Hot

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiogra”, p.341, Simon and Schuster

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• Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;
  Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Sea, Land

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

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• We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

  William Butler Yeats

  Peace, Water, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2007). “The Celtic Twilight”, p.70, Library of Alexandria

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• Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Children, Fall

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

  William Butler Yeats

  Ideas, Breakfast, Poet

  William Butler Yeats (1994). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. V: Later Essays”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

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• Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Hands, Laughing

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

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• Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  William Butler Yeats

  Nature, Past, Byzantium

  "Sailing to Byzantium" l. 30 (1928)

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• Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon.

  William Butler Yeats

  Wise, Running, Stars

  W. B. Yeats, “The Young Man's Song”

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• Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

  William Butler Yeats

  Thinking, Swag, Design

  Speech at Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate) on the Coinage Bill, March 03, 1926.

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• I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fire, Chaos

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.47, Wordsworth Editions

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• Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.

  William Butler Yeats

  Liberty, Savages, World

  "Swift's Epitaph" l. 1 (1933) See Swift 34

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• Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
  The entire combustible world in one small room
  As though dried straw, and if we turn about
  The bare chimney is gone black out
  Because the work had finished in that flare.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Small Rooms, Black

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

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• Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Evil, Imagination

  "The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiographies".

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• John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

  William Butler Yeats

  Strong, Soil, Said

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.244, Hayes Barton Press

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• I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

  William Butler Yeats

  Death, Years, Mind

  "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 9 (1919)

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• It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fashion, Passion, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.339, Simon and Schuster

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• I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.

  William Butler Yeats

  Byzantium, Bird, Tree

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.503

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• A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sweet, Hard Work, Kitchen

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.31, Library of Alexandria

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• The living can assist the imagination of the dead.

  William Butler Yeats

  Imagination

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• Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

  William Butler Yeats

  Art, Brain, World

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?"

  William Butler Yeats

  Wise, Heart, Eye

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.76, Wordsworth Editions

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• Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

  William Butler Yeats

  Vanity, Years, Long

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.498, Hayes Barton Press

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• Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

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• Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Thinking, Stones, Tongue

  William Butler Yeats (2016). “Collected Poems”, p.134, William Butler Yeats

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