William Butler Yeats Quotes About Soul

Quotes about: Soul

• One man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
  And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Men, Bending Down

  'When You Are Old'

• Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

  William Butler Yeats

  Adversity, Temptation, Soul

• When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Stars, Book

  "When You Are Old" l. 1 (1893)

• Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.

  William Butler Yeats

  Party, Character, Fighting

• The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sex, Soul, Tragedy

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.398, Simon and Schuster

• All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

  William Butler Yeats

  Soul, Opinion, Empty

• As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

  William Butler Yeats

  Uplifting, Dream, Spiritual

  William Butler Yeats, Ulick O'Connor (1990). “The Yeats companion”, Pavilion Books

• It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fighting, Dark, Back Alleys

• I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

  William Butler Yeats

  Clothes, Soul, Naked

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.235, Wordsworth Editions

• If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

  William Butler Yeats

  Soul, Looks, Body

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.155

• The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Believe, Writing

  William Butler Yeats (1955). “Letters”

• There is only one romance the Soul's.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Romance, Soul

• 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?

  William Butler Yeats

  Wisdom, Oil, Dancing

  "Among School Children" l. 57 (1928) See Quarles 1

• THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurred She stood in desperate music wound, Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph Where the bales and the baskets lay No common intelligible sound But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea

  William Butler Yeats

  Beautiful, Girl, Fall

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.5, Hayes Barton Press

• We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.

  William Butler Yeats

  Moving, Self, Cities

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

• Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.

  William Butler Yeats

  Karma, Men, Race

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

• ...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... "When You Are Old And Gray

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Men, Bending Down

  The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"

• This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

  William Butler Yeats

  Air, Soul, London

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran (1969). “John Sherman & Dhoya”

• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Elderly, Hands

  "Sailing to Byzantium" l. 9 (1928)

• All dreams of the soul
  End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Beautiful, Dream

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.76

• My soul had found
  All happiness in its own cause or ground.
  Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot
  Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot
  Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
  And must the common round of day resume.

  William Butler Yeats

  Happiness, Sex, Soul

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.328, Hayes Barton Press

• All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will

  William Butler Yeats

  Sweet, Self, Heaven

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.478, Simon and Schuster

• Why should I seek for love or study it?
  It is of God and passes human wit;
  I study hatred with great diligence,
  For that's a passion in my own control,
  A sort of besom that can clear the soul
  Of everything that is not mind or sense.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hate, Passion, Hatred

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.245, Wordsworth Editions

• The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

  William Butler Yeats

  Stars, Men, Soul

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

• Death and life were not
  Till man made up the whole,
  Made lock, stock and barrel
  Out of his bitter soul

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Men, Soul

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.428, Hayes Barton Press

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