William Butler Yeats Quotes

For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Life Quotes , Wisdom Quotes

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Life Changing Quotes , Book Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Wine Quotes , Sleep Quotes

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Children Quotes , Hands Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Butterfly Quotes , Eye Quotes

Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Love You Quotes , Men Quotes

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Poetry Quotes , Limits Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Love Quotes , Believe Quotes

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Motivational Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , White Quotes , Calling Quotes

A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Journey Quotes , Men Quotes

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Moon Quotes , Men Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Journey Quotes , Numbers Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Death Quotes

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Life Quotes , Eye Quotes

The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Desire Quotes , Might Quotes

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Beauty Quotes , Swans Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Hands Quotes , Sea Quotes

We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Dream Quotes , Mirrors Quotes

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Time Quotes , Men Quotes