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William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 9

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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

William Butler Yeats
Thinking, Swag, Design
Speech at Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate) on the Coinage Bill, March 03, 1926.

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

William Butler Yeats
Fire, Chaos
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.47, Wordsworth Editions

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Small Rooms, Black
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.110, Wordsworth Editions

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.

William Butler Yeats
Liberty, Savages, World
"Swift's Epitaph" l. 1 (1933) See Swift 34

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats
Death, Years, Mind
"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 9 (1919)

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

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

It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

William Butler Yeats
Fashion, Passion, Men
William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.339, Simon and Schuster

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.

William Butler Yeats
Byzantium, Bird, Tree
William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.503

The living can assist the imagination of the dead.

William Butler Yeats
Imagination

A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.

William Butler Yeats
Sweet, Hard Work, Kitchen
William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.31, Library of Alexandria

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.

William Butler Yeats
Dream, Book, Hands
William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.

William Butler Yeats
Love
William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

William Butler Yeats
Art, Men, Meditation
William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

William Butler Yeats
Struggle, Writing, World
William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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 down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

William Butler Yeats
Vanity, Years, Long
William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.498, Hayes Barton Press

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

William Butler Yeats
Art, Brain, World
William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?"

William Butler Yeats
Wise, Heart, Eye
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.76, Wordsworth Editions

Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

William Butler Yeats
Thinking, Stones, Tongue
William Butler Yeats (2016). “Collected Poems”, p.134, William Butler Yeats

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

William Butler Yeats
Wall, Truth, Men
1936 'An Acre of Grass', stanza 3. Collected in New Poems (1938).

And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

William Butler Yeats
Kissing, Dancing, Pay
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.112, Wordsworth Editions

...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. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

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

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

William Butler Yeats
Twilight, Heart, Sadness
'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death'

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.

William Butler Yeats
Song, Night, Resonance
"Byzantium" l. 1 (1933)

...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... "When You Are Old And Gray

William Butler Yeats
Love, Men, Bending Down
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

William Butler Yeats
Ideas, Breakfast, Poet
William Butler Yeats (1994). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. V: Later Essays”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

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