Shadow Quotes by William Butler Yeats

9 Shadow quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Shadow quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

William Butler Yeats shares nine brief verses that weave symbolism and myth around the idea of shadow, delivering his lyrical depth in a succinct package.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

“The Light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed The Shadow of Shadows looks on the deed alone.”

William Butler Yeats

Image

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

William Butler Yeats

Image

Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will…

William Butler Yeats

Image

A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the…

William Butler Yeats

Image

somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless…

William Butler Yeats

Image

My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow…

William Butler Yeats

Image

A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and…

William Butler Yeats

Image

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,' And then, 'I am old enough'; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Other authors on Shadow

More by William Butler Yeats

Time can but make her beauty over again.

William Butler Yeats

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

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

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

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

Image

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

William Butler Yeats

Image

Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

William Butler Yeats

Image

We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.

William Butler Yeats

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

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

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

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

Image

We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women…

William Butler Yeats

Image

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

William Butler Yeats

Image

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide,…

William Butler Yeats

Image