William Butler Yeats Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Religious Quotes , Art Quotes

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Earthquakes Quotes , Toil Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Summer Quotes , Heart Quotes

To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

...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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Sweet Quotes , Stars Quotes

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Art Quotes , Brain Quotes

Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Character Quotes , Coward Quotes

What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Mystery Quotes , Uncontrollable Quotes

A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Sweet Quotes , Hard Work Quotes

All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Garden Quotes , Earth Quotes

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Christian Quotes , Passion Quotes

But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Country Quotes , Glasses Quotes

Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Swimming Quotes , Mermaid Quotes