William Butler Quotes

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

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

O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

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

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

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.

It seems to me that true love is a discipline.

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.

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

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

Love comes in at the eye.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.

All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.

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

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

When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.

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

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.

When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.

I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

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

"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.

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

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.

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

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

But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.

God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.

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.

... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.

Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.