William Butler Yeats Quotes

494 Sourced Quotes

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.

William Butler Yeats
While on that old grey stone I sat
Under the old wind-broken tree,
I knew that One is animate,
Mankind inanimate phantasy.

William Butler Yeats
Now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.

William Butler Yeats
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

William Butler Yeats
The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

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

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

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

William Butler Yeats
Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?
I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns....

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

William Butler Yeats
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd.
"This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out,
"Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.

William Butler Yeats
When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things...

William Butler Yeats
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still;
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold
And bid them wander obeying your will,
Flame under flame, till Time be no more....

William Butler Yeats
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?

William Butler Yeats
When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.

William Butler Yeats
Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.

William Butler Yeats
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
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

William Butler Yeats
Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.

William Butler Yeats
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then....

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
What if the Church and the State
Are the mob that howls at the door!
Wine shall run thick to the end,
Bread taste sour.

William Butler Yeats