Quotes By William Butler Yeats
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.
William Butler Yeats
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.
William Butler Yeats
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
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
Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
William Butler Yeats
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
William Butler Yeats
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
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.
William Butler Yeats
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
William Butler Yeats
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
William Butler Yeats
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
William Butler Yeats
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
William Butler Yeats
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, 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