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William Butler Yeats
176 quotes
“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Frederick J. Gregg (undated, Sligo, late summer, 1886)
“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 (1865–1939) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)
“I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all — the colleges I mean — like an opera.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)
“I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, — that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality.... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Katharine Tynan (30 August 1888)
“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)
“You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Wanderings of Oisin (1889)
“The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Countess Cathleen, last lines (1892)
“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895)
“The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, II, preliminary poem (1908)
“In dreams begins responsibility.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Epigraph to the book Responsibilities (1914); this was later adapted as the title of the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (1937) by Delmore Schwartz.
“Do what you will. I do not understand stops. I write my work so completely for the ear that I feel helpless when I have to measure pauses by stops & commas.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In letter, W.B. Yeats, Chiswell, Oxford, 13 July 1915 to Bridges
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): Anima Hominis, part v
“One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep: "Hammer your thoughts into unity." For days I could think of nothing else, and for years I tested all I did by that sentence.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: If I Were Four-and-Twenty," printed in Irish Statesman (23 August 1919)
“I agree about Shaw — he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George William Russell (1 July 1921)
“This country will not always be an uncomfortable place for a country gentleman to live in, and it is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech, (28 March 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Damage to Property (Compensation) Bill
“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill.
“The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (3 March 1926), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Coinage Bill.
“Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Olivia Shakespear (24 March 1927)
“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lady Elizabeth Pelham (4 January 1939))
“The Babylonian starlight brought A fabulous, formless darkness in; Odour of blood when Christ was slain Made all platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries.Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Words alone are certain good.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still A little space for the rose-breath to fill! Lest I no more hear common things that crave; The weak worm hiding down in its small cave, The field-mouse running by me in the grass, And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass; But seek alone to hear the strange things said By God to the bright hearts of those long dead, And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know. Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 honeybee, 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;”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love: The folk who are buying and selling, The clouds on their journey above, The cold wet winds ever blowing, And the shadowy hazel grove Where mouse-grey waters are flowing, Threaten the head that I love.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pity Of Love; in recent years a statement which might have originated as a misquotation of the first lines of this has been attributed to Oscar Wilde: "To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart o…
“The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you are old and gray 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 (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: Before you were, or any hearts to beat, Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age bring the red flare again.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would mould a world of fire and dew With no one bitter, grave, or over wise, And nothing marred or old to do you wrong.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight; And love is less kind than the grey twilight, And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with the golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams beneath your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought of your beauty, and this arrow, Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow. There's no man may look upon her, no man, As when newly grown to be a woman, Tall and noble but with face and bosom Delicate in colour as apple blossom. This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason I could weep that the old is out of season.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I heard the old, old men say, 'Everything alters, And one by one we drop away. They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, 'All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O hurry where by water among the trees The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh, When they have but looked upon their images-- Would none had ever loved but you and I!Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky, When the sun looked out of his golden hood?-- O that none ever loved but you and I!O hurry to the ragged wood, for there I will drive all those lovers out and cry— O my share of the world, O yellow hair! No one has ever loved but you and I.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source