William Butler Yeats Quotes

The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.

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A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into the Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.

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Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.

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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.

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The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.

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We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.

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Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

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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.

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

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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.

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Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.

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There's keen delight in what we have: The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.

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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

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I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay

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I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

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I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

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

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

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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

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