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W.B. Yeats Quotes
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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.

Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland, and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. June 1865 – 28. January 1939
W.B. Yeats photo
W.B. Yeats: 255   quotes 283   likes

W.B. Yeats Quotes

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield”

W.B. Yeats
Soul , Courage , Fight

“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.”

W.B. Yeats
Men , World , Literature , Personality

“I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.”

W.B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Love

“My wretched dragon is perplexed.”

W.B. Yeats

“Love comes in at the eye.”

W.B. Yeats
Love

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

W.B. Yeats

The Municipal Gallery Revisited http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1659/, st. 7
Last Poems (1936-1939)
Variant: Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends.
Context: You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.

For Men , Thinking

“Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.”

W.B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Heart

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

Among School Children http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1437/, st. 8
The Tower (1928)
Context: Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Music , Dance

“The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

The Second Coming (1919)
Context: p>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.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?</p

Sleep

“An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 8
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Source: The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose
Context: An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Thinking

“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”

W.B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“For he comes, the human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping
than he can understand.”

W.B. Yeats

The Stolen Child http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1695/, st. 1
Crossways (1889)
Variant: Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Context: p>Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. </p

World , Understanding , Water

“Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.”

W.B. Yeats
Wisdom , Books , Dead

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

W.B. Yeats

“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
Sex , Mood , Dead

“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

“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.

Men

“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
Peace , Singing

“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
Life , Birth , Thinking , Dependency

“A lonely impulse of delight”

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)

Life , Rage , Perfection

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

W.B. Yeats

“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;

“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/

Beauty , Nature , Heart

“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/

Sleep

“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/

Heart , Animals

“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

Thinking

“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/

Parting

“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/

Solitude , Holiday

“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/

World , Weather

“Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end.”

W.B. Yeats

Responsibilities - Introduction http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1572/
Responsibilities (1914)

“Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

V, st. 2
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

Sun , Season

“The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky.”

W.B. Yeats

The Wild Swans At Coole http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1712/, st. 1
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

Beauty , Autumn , Tree , Water

“Whether they knew or not,
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard’s eye.”

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

The Seven Sages http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1685/
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Hate

“All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia.”

W.B. Yeats

Lapis Lazuli http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1522/, st. 2
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

Winter , Heart , Summer

“What were all the world’s alarms
To mighty Paris when he found
Sleep upon a golden bed
That first dawn in Helen’s arms?”

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

Lullaby http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1527/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

World , Sleep

“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.”

W.B. Yeats

The Countess Cathleen http://www.letras.ufrj.br/veralima/6_referencias/63_e_texts_2005/yeats/countess_cathleen/yeats_countess_cathleen_2005.htm, last lines (1892)

God , World