William Butler Yeats quote: "A DEEP-SWORN VOW Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face."

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage i...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that Willia...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

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

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetr...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

To be born woman is to know -- although they do not speak of it at school -- women must labor to be ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar tho...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unsti...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You shall go with me, newly-married bride,
And gaze upon a merrier multitude.
White-armed Nual...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort tha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covere...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opini...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

In dreams begin responsibility.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

In dreams begins responsibility.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious m...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambas...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of jo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly becaus...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alon...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Befo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy whe...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

How can we know the dancer from the dance?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart. -William Butler Yeats.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take th...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, becau...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

All empty sould tend toward extreme opinions.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift,...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

And say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I call on those that call me son,Grandson, or great-grandson,On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We were the last romantics -- chose for themeTraditional sanctity and loveliness.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. S...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my moth...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's mor...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Who stole your wits awayAnd where are they gone?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

It is not permitted to a man who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his onl...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk throug...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFro...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy whe...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have no question:It is enough, I know what fixed the stationOf star and cloud.And knowing all, I c...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

My fiftieth year had come and gone,I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,And open book and ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Test every work of intellect or faith,And everything that your own hands have wroughtAnd call those ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Nobody running at full speed has either a head or a heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always be having arguments.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a man's eye...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Time drops in decay,Like a candle burnt out,And the mountains and woodsHave their day, have their da...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I hear the wind a blowI hear the grass a grow,And all that I know, I know.But I will not speak, I wi...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Once more the storm is howling, and half hidUnder this cradle-hood and coverlidMy child sleeps on.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Now that my ladder's goneI must lie down where all ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

TOIL and grow rich, what's that but to lie with a foul witch and after, drained dry, to be brought t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he wil...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and u...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An intellectual hatred is the worst.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intent;But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of ex...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

But where's the wild dog that has praised his fleas?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves among silence
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But gr...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees --Those dying gen...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Of conflicts with others we make retorica, of conflicts with ourselves poetry
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the ha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plun...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls now;Let us part, er...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . .
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

May she be granted beauty and yet notBeauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,Or hers before a loo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .I hear it in the deep heart's core.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I'd as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I heard the old, old, men say "all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

There's more enterpriseIn walking naked.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Farewell -- farewell,For I am weary of the weight of time.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When such as I cast out remorseSo great a sweetness flows into the breastWe must laugh and we must s...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once lo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Out of Ireland have we come.Great hatred, little room,Maimed us at the start.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I dri...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Style, personality -- deliberately adopted and therefore a mask -- is the only escape from the hot-f...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps,...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gif...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

That William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the moun...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opini...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
La...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Miss Flora McFlimsey of Madison Square, Has made three separate journeys to Paris, And her fat...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Whi...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the ...
WILLIAM FRANCIS BUTLER

Doubtless God could have made a better berry (than the strawberry), but doubtless God never did
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare,When at the same moment she had on a dressWhich cost ...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

Really and truly -- I've nothing to wear.
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

A DEEP-SWORN VOW Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face.

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William Butler Yeats

A DEEP-SWORN VOW Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Yet always when I look death in the face, When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, Suddenly I meet your face.

William Butler Yeats

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