No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ? — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair? — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
In life courtesy and self-possession, and in the arts style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind, for both arise out… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving… — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine. — William Butler Yeats Copy Share Image
