William butler yeats quotes

Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.

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

What can be explained is not poetry.

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.

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

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.

An intellectual hate is the worst.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.

It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.

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

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

In dreams begin responsibilitiy.

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

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

In dreams begins responsibility.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.

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.

Everything in nature is resurrection.

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.

One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.

We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

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

I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.

If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.

Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

It seems to me that true love is a discipline.

It is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind That is not in the world.

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: For there the mystical brotherhood Of sun and moon and hollow and wood And river and stream work out their will.

When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.

The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away

Love comes in at the eye.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.

I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.

From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.

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

When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 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; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Where there is nothing, there is God.

Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.

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.

Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

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

Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.

Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.

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

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest.

It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is

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

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

The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

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

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

The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

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

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

Though leaves are many, the root is one.

Hammer your thoughts into unity.

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.

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.

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.

By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.

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

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.

And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Ah, let us kiss each other's eyes,/And laugh our love away.

Myself I must remake.

All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.

Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

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.

only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art.

It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike.

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

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

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

Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.