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William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 10

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Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not

Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.

William Butler Yeats
Death, Summer, Spring
William Butler Yeats (2012). “The Tower: A Facsimile Edition”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.

William Butler Yeats
Italian, Men, Land
William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

What do we know but that we face one another in this place?

William Butler Yeats
Faces, Knows
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.354, Simon and Schuster

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats
Heart, Night, Lakes
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

Words alone are certain good.

William Butler Yeats
Certain
William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.142, Penguin

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

William Butler Yeats
Farewell, Weight, Weary
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Hour Glass”, p.17, Yokai Publishing

When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.

William Butler Yeats
Sweet, Soul, Done
William Butler Yeats (2007). “The Celtic Twilight”, p.8, Library of Alexandria

For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Wisdom, Moon
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.242, Simon and Schuster

The problem wiv some blokes is that wen they ain't drunk, they're sober.

William Butler Yeats
Drunk, Problem, Sober

When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

William Butler Yeats
Wise, Book, Thinking
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiogra”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

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; What else have I to spur me into song?

William Butler Yeats
Song, Thinking, Lust
'The Spur'

He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.

William Butler Yeats
God, Purple, Care
William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.116, Simon and Schuster

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

William Butler Yeats
Philosophy, Fighting, Philosopher
"The Letters of W.B. Yeats".

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon.

William Butler Yeats
Wise, Running, Stars
W. B. Yeats, “The Young Man's Song”

All the stream that's roaring by Came out of a needle's eye.

William Butler Yeats
Eye, Roaring, Streams
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed.

William Butler Yeats
Dream, Stars, Work
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

William Butler Yeats
Heart, Substance, Enmity
The Cat and the Moon (1924) "Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

William Butler Yeats
World, Fairy, Empty Souls
William Butler Yeats (1998). “Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Play
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.303, Simon and Schuster

There is only one romance the Soul's.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Romance, Soul

My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.

William Butler Yeats
Happiness, Sex, Soul
William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.328, Hayes Barton Press

on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.

William Butler Yeats
Nature, Men, Moon
William Butler Yeats (2011). “The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

William Butler Yeats
Goes On, Revolution, Cannons
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.267, Wordsworth Editions

A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.

William Butler Yeats
Drinking, Men, Drunk
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.268, Wordsworth Editions

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

William Butler Yeats
Atheist, Mystery, Agree
Letter to George William Russell, July 01, 1921.

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