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William Butler Yeats Quotes about Life

All William Butler Yeats Quotes Age Anarchy Art Beauty Beer Bones Chaos Character Children Country Dance Dancing Death Desire Discipline Drinking Dying Earth Evil Faith Fashion Fate Fear Fighting Friendship Genius Giving God Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hills House Imagination Innocence Inspirational Joy Judging Kindness Kissing Laughter Learning Life quotes Literature Logic Loneliness Losing Loss Love Lying Memories Moon Morning Mountain Nature Overcoming Pain Passion Past Peace Philosophy Pleasure Poetry Pride Reality Responsibility Running Sadness School Silence Sleep Solitude Soul Spring Style Summer Time Tragedy Truth Twilight Unity Violence Virtue Vision War Water Wine Winter Wisdom Work Writing Youth
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

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

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Friendship

There is another world, but it is in this one.

William Butler Yeats
Life, World, Chaos

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Disappointment, Long

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Believe, Writing
William Butler Yeats (1955). “Letters”

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats
Love, Life, Dream
"HeWishes for the Cloths of Heaven" l. 7 (1899)

What can be explained is not poetry.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Poetry

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Dance
"Among School Children" l. 61 (1928)

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Fall, Falling Apart
"The Second Coming" l. 1 (1921)

The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Stars, Blood
William Butler Yeats (2013). “Early Poems”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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

William Butler Yeats
Life, Heart, World
William Butler Yeats (1954). “The Letters of W.B. Yeats”

Love comes in at the eye.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Eye
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.75, Wordsworth Editions

In dreams begins responsibility.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Dream
Responsibilities epigraph (1914). Said to be from an "Old Play."

Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by

William Butler Yeats
Life, Tombstone, Eye
"Under Ben Bulben" l. 89 (1939). The final three lines are in fact inscribed on Yeats's gravestone.

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

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Art
William Butler Yeats (1990). “W. B. Yeats: A Vision and Related Writings”, Random House (UK)

Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Thinking
William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.151

Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Race
William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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

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

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

A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, What Matters
William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.8, Hayes Barton Press

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Long
William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.98, Library of Alexandria

My wretched dragon is perplexed.

William Butler Yeats
Inspirational, Life, Dragons
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.148, Wordsworth Editions

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Eye, Gay
'From Oedipus at Colonus'.

In life courtesy and self-possession, and in the arts style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind, for both arise out of a deliberate shaping of all things and from never being swept away, whatever the emotion into confusion or dullness.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Art, Self
William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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