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William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 5

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Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

William Butler Yeats
Men, And Love
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

William Butler Yeats
Love, Hair, Yellow
'Anne Gregory'

All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.

William Butler Yeats
Garden, Earth, Soil
William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.244, Hayes Barton Press

And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.

William Butler Yeats
Dance, Ireland And The Irish, Fiddle
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.60, Wordsworth Editions

I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.

William Butler Yeats
Flower, Heart, Rose
William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.140, Penguin

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

William Butler Yeats
Dream, Anxiety

Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.

William Butler Yeats
Reality, Glasses, Mirrors
William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.139, Penguin

Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.

William Butler Yeats
Doe, Ethics, Cry
William Butler Yeats (2017). “The Cutting of an Agate”, p.73, BoD – Books on Demand

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

William Butler Yeats
Beauty, Beautiful, Men
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

William Butler Yeats
Morning, Veils, Dropping
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.

William Butler Yeats
Sweet, Flower, Rose
William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.123, Penguin

to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief.

William Butler Yeats
Hate, Evil, May
William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.140, Library of Alexandria

Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

William Butler Yeats
Book, Writing, Thinking

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats
Fall, Blood, Passionate
"The Second Coming" l. 1 (1921)

When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.

William Butler Yeats
Blessed, Heart, Laughing
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.200, Wordsworth Editions

Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made.

William Butler Yeats
Eye, Heart, Dark
1928 'A Woman Young and Old', part 2 'Before the World was Made', stanza 1. Collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933).

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats
Kissing, Moon, Hands
"The Song of Wandering Aengus" l. 19 (1899)

The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.

William Butler Yeats
Good Luck, Long, House
William Butler Yeats (2007). “The Celtic Twilight”, p.18, Library of Alexandria

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

William Butler Yeats
Beautiful, Women, School

It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.

William Butler Yeats
Love, Discipline, Fine
"Memoirs".

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats
Lasts, Beast, Hours
"The Second Coming" l. 18 (1921)

For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.

William Butler Yeats
Beauty, Beautiful, Kindness
William Butler Yeats, “A Prayer For My Daughter”

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Light, Shadow
Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 3

An intellectual hate is the worst.

William Butler Yeats
Hate, Intellectual, Worst

Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Laughter, Children
William Butler Yeats (2016). “Collected Poems”, p.188, William Butler Yeats

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