Stones Quotes by William Butler Yeats

8 Stones quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Stones quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

Yeats’s eight thoughts on Stones weave lyrical mysticism with national symbolism, each a compact glimpse of his poetic depth. The modest collection still conveys his resonant, layered style.

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

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.

William Butler Yeats

Image

While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.

William Butler Yeats

Image

Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns? I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human…

William Butler Yeats

Image

A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

William Butler Yeats

Image

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Other authors on Stones

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