William Butler Yeats quotes - page 3

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. (William Butler Yeats)
O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
William Butler Yeats
Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.
William Butler Yeats
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
William Butler Yeats
The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.
William Butler Yeats
It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
William Butler Yeats
Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.
William Butler Yeats
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.
William Butler Yeats
Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost.
William Butler Yeats
If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest.
William Butler Yeats
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)
Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
William Butler Yeats
My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.
William Butler Yeats
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
Though leaves are many, the root is one Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.
William Butler Yeats
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
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
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave of the sea.
William Butler Yeats
Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.
William Butler Yeats
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 plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
William Butler Yeats
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)
Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
William Butler Yeats
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
The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
William Butler Yeats
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