William Butler Yeats ✓

(1865–1939) playwright Irish Free State

383 quotes in 3721 categories

[Wikidata] Irish poet and playwright (1865–1939)... | [Wikipedia] William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory, founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chi

Best William Butler Yeats Sayings

• Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it. Alive
• The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul. Intercourse
• Hammer your thoughts into unity. Hammer
• The falcon cannot hear the falconer Cannot Hear
• Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult. All
• I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to… Accept
• My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the… Bone
• The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I… All
• I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch. All
• Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of… Ancient
• I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill,… Ambition
• On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by! Cast
• You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young;… Age
• The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are… Bring
• I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang. Artificial
• Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike. Clock
• Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to… Argue
• Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered… Any
• There is only one romance the Soul's. Greatest Love
• We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with.… Choose
• Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul," I cried. "My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed… Bed
• Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty. Besotted
• The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong. Abed
• Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams. Brush
• Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me… Ago

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