Skip to content

Truth Quotes by William Butler Yeats

20 Truth quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Truth quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

Yeats’ poetry often turns truth into a mythic quest, and these twenty lines showcase his talent for turning the abstract into striking imagery. The collection feels like a walk through a dream‑filled landscape where honesty is both a beacon and a mystery.

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

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

William Butler Yeats

Image

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

William Butler Yeats

Image

“Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.”

William Butler Yeats

Image

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers…

William Butler Yeats

Image

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone,…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams;…

William Butler Yeats

Image

I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we…

William Butler Yeats

Image

William Butler Yeats Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I…

William Butler Yeats

Image

I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul," I cried. "My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor…

William Butler Yeats

Image

When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for…

William Butler Yeats

Image

We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any…

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…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of…

William Butler Yeats

Image

How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd…

William Butler Yeats

Image

“Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this,…

William Butler Yeats

Image

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat…

William Butler Yeats

Image

Other authors on Truth

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