William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 16

Quotes about:

• Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.

  William Butler Yeats

  Feet, Three, Sometimes

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.301, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Folly, Turns

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

  William Butler Yeats

  Memories, Soul, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.347, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• I bear a burden that might well try
  Men that do all by rule,
  And what can I
  That am a wandering-witted fool
  But pray to God that He ease
  My great responsibilities?

  William Butler Yeats

  Faith, Responsibility, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.127, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

• Sweetheart, do not love too long:
  I loved long and long,
  And grew to be out of fashion
  Like an old song.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fashion, Song, Loss

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.67, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe the bride-bed brings despair,
  For each an imagined image brings
  And finds a real image there...

  William Butler Yeats

  Marriage, Real, Despair

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.132, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

• What can books of men that wive
  In a dragon-guarded land,
  Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
  Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
  Do, but awake a hope to live...?

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Hope, Art

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
  I had a beautiful friend
  And dreamed that the old despair
  Would end in love in the end.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beautiful, Hope, Hands

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.

  William Butler Yeats

  People, Opinion, Moral

  4 Copy quote

• All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Tears, Sticks, Gone

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

  8 Copy quote

• yet it seems
  Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
  Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
  But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
  And there's but common greenness after that.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Morning, Garden

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Even the wisest man grows tense
  With some sort of violence
  Before he can accomplish fate,
  Know his work or choose his mate.
  
  Poet and sculptor, do the work,
  Nor let the modish painter shirk

  William Butler Yeats

  Wisdom, Art, Fate

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.334, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Children, Hands, Water

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Life, Dream

  The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Pity of Love"

  14 Copy quote

• A passion-driven exultant man sings out
  Sentences that he has never thought.

  William Butler Yeats

  Passion, Men, Driven

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.247, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Ambition, Lakes

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• "Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
  That he may fight the horses of the sea."
  The Druids took them to their mystery,
  And chaunted for three days.

  William Butler Yeats

  Horse, Fighting, Sea

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Men, Frogs

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?

  William Butler Yeats

  Girl, Death, Pretty Girl

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.342, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

  William Butler Yeats

  Blood, Wings, Bravery

  "September, 1913" l. 7 (1914)

  5 Copy quote

• But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
  Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
  That passion could bring character enough
  And pressed at midnighht in some public place
  Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.

  William Butler Yeats

  Girl, Passion, Character

  'The Statues'

  4 Copy quote

• The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Joy, Fascination

  "The Fascination of What's Difficult" l. 1 (1910)

  12 Copy quote

• What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?

  William Butler Yeats

  Sleep, Paris, Bed

  'Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The Stare's Nest by my Window'

  11 Copy quote

• Though I have many words,
  What woman's satisfied,
  I am no longer faint
  Because at her side?
  O who could have foretold
  That the heart grows old?

  William Butler Yeats

  Women, Heart, Sides

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.27, Hayes Barton Press

  5 Copy quote

• I have nothing but the embittered sun;
  Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
  And now that I have come to fifty years
  I must endure the timid sun.

  William Butler Yeats

  Mother, Moon, Reality

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

Page 16 of 24

First

← Prev

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin