William Butler Yeats quotes - page 4

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broomsticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone. (William Butler Yeats)
Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked- and where are they? View quote
William Butler Yeats
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher. View quote
William Butler Yeats
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. View quote
William Butler Yeats
But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent. View quote
William Butler Yeats
It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring. View quote
William Butler Yeats
What can be explained is not poetry. (William Butler Yeats)
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. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live. View quote
William Butler Yeats
All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter, seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Under bare Ben Bulben's head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived. View quote
William Butler Yeats
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. View quote
William Butler Yeats
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. (William Butler Yeats)
All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born. View quote
William Butler Yeats
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. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn? View quote
William Butler Yeats
Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb. View quote
William Butler Yeats