Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. W
  4. William Butler Yeats
  5. Life

William Butler Yeats Quotes about Life - Page 2

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
Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Lonely, Spring
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.257, Simon and Schuster

Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Lost Love, Triumph
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.99, Wordsworth Editions

On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

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

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Dark, Men
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1932"

What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?

William Butler Yeats
Life, Hope, Art
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, But the torn petals strew the garden plot; And there's but common greenness after that.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Morning, Garden
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.

William Butler Yeats
Love, Life, Dream
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Pity of Love"

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Ambition, Lakes
William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Frogs
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Soul
William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.428, Hayes Barton Press

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Truth, Imagination
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.257, Wordsworth Editions

There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Art, Dirty
William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.179

Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Children, Men
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.30, Wordsworth Editions

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Men, Giving
William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.431, Simon and Schuster

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains; And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Pain, Rain
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Night, Garden
William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.179, Wordsworth Editions

And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly.

William Butler Yeats
Life, Change, Lying
William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.368, Simon and Schuster

You May Also Like: