William Butler Yeats Quotes

494 Sourced Quotes

I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do,
He died upon the gallows
But that is nothing new.

William Butler Yeats
I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

William Butler Yeats
I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more....

William Butler Yeats
My soul had found
All happiness in its own cause or ground.
Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot
Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot
Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
And must the common round of day resume.

William Butler Yeats
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
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
And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place....

William Butler Yeats
I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry....

William Butler Yeats
Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade...

William Butler Yeats
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.

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
A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

William Butler Yeats
The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.

William Butler Yeats
Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.

William Butler Yeats
A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew....

William Butler Yeats
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes....

William Butler Yeats
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
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
Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and passes human wit;
I study hatred with great diligence,
For that's a passion in my own control,
A sort of besom that can clear the soul
Of everything that is not mind or sense.

William Butler 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
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

William Butler Yeats
How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

William Butler Yeats
There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind....

William Butler Yeats
Even
The bed of love, that in the imagination
Had seemed to be the giver of all peace,
Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,
And as soon finished.

William Butler Yeats
Poetry and music I have banished,
But the stupidity
Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
Makes no demand.
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

William Butler Yeats
I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.

William Butler Yeats
And learn that the best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

William Butler Yeats
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
All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

William Butler Yeats
May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.

William Butler Yeats