W.B. Yeats: Trending quotes

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W.B. Yeats: 510 quotes285 likes

“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
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”

W.B. Yeats

St. 1 In The Seven Woods (1904), Adam's Curse http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1431/

“Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked— and where are they?”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

V, st. 3 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 4 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.”

W.B. Yeats

Speech (3 March 1926), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Coinage Bill. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0006/S.0006.192603030003.html

“Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

St. 3 The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/

“Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

I, st. 4 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, 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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 3 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:”

W.B. Yeats

The Lake Isle of Innisfree http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1641/, st. 1 The Rose (1893) Context: I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

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

W.B. Yeats

“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.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

The Choice http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1602/, st. 1 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“A lonely impulse of delight”

W.B. Yeats

“I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.”

W.B. Yeats

“For the winds that awakened the stars are blowing through my blood.”

W.B. Yeats

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

W.B. Yeats

“I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.”

W.B. Yeats

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1663/ In The Seven Woods (1904) Context: I heard the old, old men say, 'Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.' They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, 'All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters.

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

W.B. Yeats

Source: Selected Poetry

“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.”

W.B. Yeats

Letter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895)

“I am still of [the] opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood--sex and the dead.”

W.B. Yeats

“When one gets quiet, then something wakes up inside one, something happy and quiet like the stars.”

W.B. Yeats

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

W.B. Yeats