William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 9

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Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.

William Butler Yeats

Wise, Hands, Storm

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.110

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Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

William Butler Yeats

Lonely, Cheer, Loneliness

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

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We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.

William Butler Yeats

Keys, Uncertainty

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.173, Wordsworth Editions

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Words alone are certain good.

William Butler Yeats

Certain

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

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Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

William Butler Yeats

Religious, Art, Age

William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.362, Simon and Schuster

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Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.

William Butler Yeats

Running, Imagination, What If

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.129

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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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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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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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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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Who mocks at music mocks at love.

William Butler Yeats

Love

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Kissing, White

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.50, Wordsworth Editions

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In life courtesy and self-possession, and in the arts style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind, for both arise out of a deliberate shaping of all things and from never being swept away, whatever the emotion into confusion or dullness.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Art, Self

William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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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 believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away... and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

William Butler Yeats

Beautiful, Wise, Believe

"When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales".

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

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