William Butler Yeats Quotes About Poetry

Quotes about: Poetry

• We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

  William Butler Yeats

  Poetry, Argument, Quarrels

  "Anima Hominis" (1924)

• What can be explained is not poetry.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Poetry

• The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Poetry, Bed

• One had a lovely face,
  And two or three had charm,
  But charm and face were in vain.
  Because the mountain grass
  Cannot keep the form
  Where the mountain hare has lain.

  William Butler Yeats

  Two, Poetry, Lovely

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.125, Wordsworth Editions

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Poetry, Limits, Poet

  Alexander Norman Jeffares, William Butler Yeats (1984). “A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats”, Palgrave Schol, Print UK

• I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hate, Fighting, Fate

  "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 1 (1919)

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Happiness, Sweet, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

• All think what other people think;
  All know the man their neighbor knows.
  Lord, what would they say
  Did their Catullus walk that way?

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Thinking, Gossip

  "The Scholars" l. 9 (1919)

• Poetry and music I have banished,
  But the stupidity
  Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
  Makes no demand.
  I bend my body to the spade
  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Music, Dirty, Roots

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.325, Simon and Schuster

• All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
  One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
  The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
  Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
  Than this accustomed toil.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Land, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.38, Hayes Barton Press

• O heart, be at peace, because
  Nor knave nor dolt can break
  What's not for their applause,
  Being for a woman's sake.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Poetry, Sake

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

• O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
  The poets labouring all their days
  To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
  Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Dream, Women

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.54, Wordsworth Editions

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Gay, Sick, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.250, Wordsworth Editions

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