William Butler Quotes

. . . you may think I waste my breath Pretending that there can be passion That has more life in it than death

I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.

I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.

I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.

There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.

I say that Roger Casement Did what he had to do, He died upon the gallows But that is nothing new.

But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

Time can but make her beauty over again.

What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.

For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.

Education is not about filling a pail, it's about lighting a fire.

The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.

Education is not filling

How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.

Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.

While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.

Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.

My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.

My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.

even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.

Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy.

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.

And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.

Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.

O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.

Man has created death.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.

I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.