William Butler Yeats Quotes

Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Green Quotes , Hunger 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

And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Girl Quotes , Dream 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

to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Hate Quotes , Evil Quotes

A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Citizens Quotes , Poet Quotes

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Birthday Quotes , Race Quotes

Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing Quotes

There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Air Quotes , Doors Quotes

On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , World Quotes , Lips Quotes

His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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