William Butler Yeats quotes

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (William Butler Yeats)
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William Butler Yeats
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats
In dreams begins responsibility.
William Butler Yeats
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
William Butler Yeats
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
William Butler Yeats
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 like an opera.
William Butler Yeats
All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.
William Butler Yeats
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
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. (William Butler Yeats)
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
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
William Butler Yeats
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
William Butler Yeats
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
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.
William Butler Yeats
Think where man's glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
William Butler Yeats
Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.
William Butler Yeats
Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch. (William Butler Yeats)
Locke sank into a swoon The Garden died God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
William Butler Yeats
I prayfor fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.
William Butler Yeats
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats