William Butler Yeats Quotes

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

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.

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

"(I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. ("The Adoration of The Magi")"

...All literature in some degree, exists to reveal a more powerful and passionate, a more divine world than ours.

By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams under our feet. We should tread softly because we tread on their dreams

Surely some revelation is at hand.

When you are old and grey 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

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,

"there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart.

-from "The Song of the Happy Shepherd

I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.