If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made.


William Butler Yeats

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats...
HOWARD NEMEROV
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women ...
W.B. YEATS
It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Only children simply accept the fact that their parents have the right to make choices for them. Eve...
THE MIRROR OF MAYBE
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA
With the right help, children have a good chance of overcoming their issues while they are still you...
KATE MIDDLETON
As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
KING SOLOMON
I don't mind a big fascinator. I think there is more scope for artwork in a fascinator rather th...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I don't think I'll still be riding at 40. There are a couple of people who are still riding ...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I'd love to have kids, but not at the moment.
ZARA PHILLIPS
Virtually everything that gets printed about me is wrong anyway, so it doesn't really matter wha...
ZARA PHILLIPS
It's stupid to say that I don't like being in the public eye, but I don't like doing stu...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I'm an affectionate person.
ZARA PHILLIPS
People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me...
ZARA PHILLIPS
Sometimes people will come up in the street and say: 'My daughter loves you, will you sign an au...
ZARA PHILLIPS
Taking part in an Olympics on home ground is something you dream about.
ZARA PHILLIPS
My brother and I have been able to get on and have been very lucky to do things with our family that...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I don't think about the media.
ZARA PHILLIPS
I love the sport and being competitive.
ZARA PHILLIPS
The horses are all characters, all personalities. Some you get along with, some you don't, some ...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I hate having my picture taken.
ZARA PHILLIPS
Unfortunately in sport it's either good or bad. You've got to take the highs and the lows.
ZARA PHILLIPS
My mother is massively into sailing, so we always had Musto clothes, and it went on from there, real...
ZARA PHILLIPS
The senior members of the royal family work very hard and I don't think people quite realise tha...
ZARA PHILLIPS
In our sport you're very lucky to find a horse of a lifetime and I found mine relatively early. ...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I think Facebook's dangerous. So many people I know get into trouble with Facebook... I'd ra...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I'm not a princess anyway so I find that quite weird to be labelled as one.
ZARA PHILLIPS
Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.
KING JAMES I
My dear mamma is quite right when she says that we must lay down principles and not depart from them...
MARIE ANTOINETTE
I never make a trip to the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascina...
WALLIS SIMPSON
I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the w...
WALLIS SIMPSON
Never explain, never complain.
WALLIS SIMPSON
I have always had the courage for the new things that life sometimes offers.
WALLIS SIMPSON
Forgive me for not writing but this man is exhausting.
WALLIS SIMPSON
You can never be too rich or too thin.
WALLIS SIMPSON
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
KING SOLOMON
It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most...
FREDERICK THE GREAT
Addiction is a hugely complex and destructive disease, and its impact can be simply devastating. All...
KATE MIDDLETON
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
MARIE ANTOINETTE
I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all.
MARIE ANTOINETTE
I think change needs to be egoless. It's not about my leaving my fingerprints or a legacy. It...
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN
We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
QUEEN VICTORIA
I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman.
KING JAMES I
I feel very, very lucky that George has got a little sister.
KATE MIDDLETON
It would be doing me great injustice to think that I have any feeling of indifference to my country;...
MARIE ANTOINETTE
We shouldn't judge people through the prism of our own stereotypes.
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN
I don't even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.
PRINCESS DIANA
What must it be like for a little boy to read that daddy never loved mummy?
PRINCESS DIANA
The kindness and affection from the public have carried me through some of the most difficult period...
PRINCESS DIANA
People think that at the end of the day a man is the only answer. Actually, a fulfilling job is bett...
PRINCESS DIANA
I don't want expensive gifts; I don't want to be bought. I have everything I want. I just wa...
PRINCESS DIANA
There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
PRINCESS DIANA
I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feel...
PRINCESS DIANA
Everyone of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves...
PRINCESS DIANA
The biggest disease this day and age is that of people feeling unloved.
PRINCESS DIANA
When you are happy you can forgive a great deal.
PRINCESS DIANA
I want to walk into a room, be it a hospital for the dying or a hospital for the sick children, and ...
PRINCESS DIANA
If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.
PRINCESS DIANA
Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.
PRINCESS DIANA
HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven...
PRINCESS DIANA
Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.
PRINCESS DIANA
I like to be a free spirit. Some don't like that, but that's the way I am.
PRINCESS DIANA
Dread lord and cousin, may the almighty preserve your reverence and lordship in long life and good f...
OWEN GLENDOWER
And in that I cannot send unto you all my businesses in writing, I despatch these present bearers fu...
OWEN GLENDOWER
Most redoubted lord and right sovereign cousin, may the Almighty Lord have you in his keeping.
OWEN GLENDOWER
Being married gives one one's position like nothing else can.
QUEEN VICTORIA
For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse ...
QUEEN VICTORIA
An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful.
QUEEN VICTORIA

More William Butler Yeats

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
A DEEP-SWORN VOW Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Ye...
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
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