W.B. Yeats Quotes

Hammer your thoughts into unity.

Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.

... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?

There's keen delight in what we have: The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.

The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

An intellectual hate is the worst.

I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.

Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.

Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.

For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.

We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.

Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.

In dreams begin responsibilitiy.

What can I but enumerate old themes?

She'd tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty.

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon.

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.

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide: Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.

The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.

O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.

All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

It seems to me that true love is a discipline.

For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.

Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

Love comes in at the eye.

Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.

It is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind That is not in the world.

What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.

now I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.

Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

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.

What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?

"Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea." The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days.

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.

It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.