William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 12

Quotes about:

• Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Dream

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.28, Wordsworth Editions

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• I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

  William Butler Yeats

  Peace, Morning, Wings

  "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" l. 1 (1893)

  14 Copy quote

• For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sweet, Work, Together

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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• I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

  William Butler Yeats

  Truth, War, Thinking

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.

  William Butler Yeats

  Death, Sex, Two

  Letter to Olivia Shakespear, Oct. 1927

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• Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul," I cried. "My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied."

  William Butler Yeats

  Friendship, Truth, Bed

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.221, Wordsworth Editions

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• A lonely impulse of delight

  William Butler Yeats

  Lonely, Contentment, Delight

  "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 9 (1919)

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• A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

  William Butler Yeats

  Citizens, Poet, Good Citizen

  "Memoirs".

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• We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936

  William Butler Yeats

  Friendship, Death, Loneliness

  4 Copy quote

• Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Men, His Love

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.527, Simon and Schuster

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• No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.

  William Butler Yeats

  Art, People, Conquer

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.362, Simon and Schuster

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• Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Evil, Imagination

  "The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiographies".

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• Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.176, Hayes Barton Press

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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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Eye, Gay

  'From Oedipus at Colonus'.

  4 Copy quote

• The women take so little stock
  In what I do or say
  They'd sooner leave their cosseting
  To hear a jackass bray.

  William Butler Yeats

  Women, Littles, Jackasses

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.14, Hayes Barton Press

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• The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.

  William Butler Yeats

  Memories, Confused, Men

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.222, Penguin

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• I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Might, Pennies, Enough

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.79, Wordsworth Editions

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• Who mocks at music mocks at love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.

  William Butler Yeats

  Art, Perfection, Flying

  William Butler Yeats (1957). “The variorum edition of the poems of W. B. Yeats”

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• What can I but enumerate old themes?

  William Butler Yeats

  Theme

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.180

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• Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dog, Cat, Boys

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

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• But O, sick children of the world,
  Of all the many changing things
  In dreary dancing past us whirled,
  To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
  Words alone are certain good.

  William Butler Yeats

  Time, Children, Past

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.142, Penguin

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• Tis the eternal law,
  That first in beauty should be first in might.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Law, Might

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• And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
  I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
  For hours when all must fade like dew.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Kissing, White

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.50, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

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