Yeats Quotes

The women that I picked spoke sweet and low
And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all. ~ William Butler Yeats

O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out. ~ William Butler Yeats

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love ~ W.B.Yeats

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements. ~ William Butler Yeats

What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms? ~ William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect. ~ W.B. Yeats

Myself I must remake. ~ W.B.Yeats

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

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

Stop believing what you want to believe. It's unbecoming ~ Max Barry

No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love. ~ William Butler Yeats

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism wa ~ W.B. Yeats

Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be ... ~ W.B.Yeats

A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again ~ W.B.Yeats

The falcon cannot hear the falconer ~ William Butler Yeats

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. ~ William Butler Yeats

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

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self. ~ William Butler Yeats

When one gets quiet, then something wakes up inside one, something happy and quiet like the stars. ~ W.B.Yeats

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us. ~ William Butler Yeats

Jerome. That is a terribly wild thought. I hope you don't believe all you say. Paul Ruttledge. Perhaps not. I only know that I want to upset everything about me. Have you not noticed that it is a complaint many of us have in this country? and whether it comes from love or hate I don't know, they are so mixed together here. ~ W.B.Yeats

Love comes in at the eye. ~ W.B.Yeats

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

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring. ~ William Butler Yeats

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness ... ~ William Butler Yeats

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

The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style. ~ William Butler Yeats

...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,
For God has bid them share an equal fate;
And when at last defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars,
We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die. ~ W.B. Yeats

What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink? ~ William Butler Yeats

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.
Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind ... ~ William Butler Yeats

I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. ~ Chinua Achebe

Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly 'worry' was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when - what was the point? All this useless sorrow? Consider the lilies of the field. Why did anyone ever worry about anything? Weren't we, as sentient beings, put upon the earth to be happy, in the brief time allotted to us? ~ Donna Tartt

Only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art. ~ William Butler Yeats

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. ~ William Butler Yeats

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. ~ W.B.Yeats

I am still of [the] opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood
sex and the dead. ~ W.B.Yeats

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind. ~ William Butler Yeats

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark. ~ W.B.Yeats

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while ... ~ William Butler Yeats

A king is but a foolish labourer
Who wastes his blood to be another's dream.
-from Fergus and the Druid ~ W.B.Yeats

One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again. ~ W.B.Yeats

To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful. ~ William Butler Yeats

There is only one romance the Soul's. ~ William Butler Yeats

A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
Marriages, alliances, and families,
And every bride's ambition satisfied. ~ William Butler Yeats

It seems to me that love, if fine, is essentially a discipline. ~ William Butler Yeats

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

I Sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again ~ W.B.Yeats

THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away ~ W.B.Yeats

And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out ~ W.B.Yeats

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away. ~ W.B.Yeats

The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over it their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Gray Truth is now her painted toy. ~ W.B.Yeats

The women take so little stock
In what I do or say
They'd sooner leave their cosseting
To hear a jackass bray ... ~ William Butler Yeats

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

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
The Second Coming ~ Wb Yeats

If she has given you children remind yourself every day of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth words in this sentence. If you hurt her in ways that are irreparable I will send out people to hurt you back, sorry, but it has to be like that. Yes, you may have had a difficult childhood, but please allow me to introduce myself: Hello, I am the woman who doesn't give a shit. Make her something warm to drink in the mornings and give her time to begin speaking; only rush at her with an embrace or a gemstone. Wildflowers. A love note. Yeats. ~ Mary-Louise Parker

I would that there was nothing in the world
But my beloved that night and day had perished,
And all that is and all that is to be,
All that is not the meeting of our lips. ~ William Butler Yeats

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

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight. ~ William Butler Yeats

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. ~ W.B.Yeats

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. ~ W.B.Yeats

Surely some revelation is at hand. ~ W.B.Yeats

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities ; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts. ~ W.B. Yeats

I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call';
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live. ~ W.B.Yeats

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. ~ W.B.Yeats

To you, W. B. Yeats, good praiser, wholesome dispraiser, heavy-handed judge, open-handed helper of us all, I offer a play of my plays for every night of the week, because you like them, and because you have taught me my trade. ~ Lady Gregory

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. ~ William Butler Yeats

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. - W. B. YEATS ~ Al Alvarez

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

But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good. ~ William Butler Yeats

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

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress ~ W.B.Yeats

The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart ... ~ William Butler Yeats

An intellectual hatred is the worst. ~ W.B.Yeats

How can we know the dancer from the dance? Did Yeats create his poems, or did his poetry make him a poet? How does one separate the creator from his
creation? They create each other. On a mutual plane of reference, one has no existence without the other. ~ Indu Muralidharan

Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away. ~ William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings

I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. ~ W.B.Yeats

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
- William Butler Yeats, He Wishes For The Cloth of Heaven. ~ W.B. Yeats

I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit ... ~ William Butler Yeats

EB: 'Ll showed me a long verse-letter, very obscene, he'd received from Dylan T[Thomas] before D's last trip here [New York] - very clever, but it really can't be published for a long, long time, he's decided. About people D. met in the U.S. etc. - one small sample: A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as 'A truck called F - - - .'

RL: 'Psycho-therapy is rather amazing - something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium - chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.'

RL: 'I have just finished the Yeats Letters - 900 & something pages - although some I'd read before. He is so Olympian always, so calm, so really unrevealing, and yet I was fascinated.'

RL: 'Probably you forget, and anyway all that is mercifully changed and all has come right since you found Lota. But at the time everything, I guess (I don't want to overdramatize) our relations seemed to have reached a new place. I assumed that would be just a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that you would accept. Yet I wanted it all to have the right build-up. Well, I didn't say anything then.'

EB: 'so I suppose I am just a born worrier, and that when the personal worries of adolescence and the years after it have more or less disappeared I promptly have to start worrying about the decline of nations . . . But I really can't bear much of American life these days - surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so ~ Robert Lowell

So like a bit of stone I lie
Under a broken tree.
I could recover if I shrieked
My heart's agony
To passing bird, but I am dumb. ~ W.B.Yeats

I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem. ~ William Butler Yeats

Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it. ~ W.B.Yeats

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward. ~ William Butler Yeats

I think the poetry that came out of Belfast, and especially the Queen's University set, in the 1970s and '80s - you know, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Ciaran Carson - that was probably the finest body of work since the Gaelic renaissance, up there with the work of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory. ~ Adrian McKinty

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.

It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It has grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;

But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down... ~ W.B. Yeats

How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb. ~ William Butler Yeats

Chance and Destiny have between them woven two-thirds of all history, and of the history of Ireland wellnigh the whole. The literature of a nation, on the other hand, is spun out of its heart. If you would know Ireland - body and soul - you must read its poems and stories. They came into existence to please nobody but the people of Ireland. Government did not make them on the one hand, nor bad seasons on the other. They are Ireland talking to herself. ~ W.B.Yeats

We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936 ~ William Butler Yeats

An intellectual hate is the worst. ~ William Butler Yeats

When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright. ~ William Butler Yeats

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney
Folk dance like a wave on the sea. ~ William Butler Yeats

What hurts the soul
My soul adores ~ W.B.Yeats

And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats

What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead? ~ William Butler Yeats

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet. ~ W.B.Yeats

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind. ~ William Butler Yeats

....tradition gives the one thing many shapes. ~ W.B.Yeats

If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree. ~ William Butler Yeats

I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodies, their stiff stays, their toes whereupon they spin like peg-tops, above all upon that chambermaid face. They might have looked timeless, Remeses the Great, but not the chambermaid, that old maid history. I spit! I spit! I spit! ~ W.B.Yeats

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
- Memory ~ W.B.Yeats