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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

“Whatever flames upon the night
Man’s own resinous heart has fed.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

II, st. 2
The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/

Heart , Night

“It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 4
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

Women

“Life moves out of a red flare of dreams
Into a common light of common hours,
Until old age bring the red flare again.”

W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894)

Life , Age , Dreams , Light

“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.”

W.B. Yeats

Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)

Sense

“Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.”

W.B. Yeats

Under Ben Bulben http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1745/, V
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Singing , Heart

“Hands, do what you’re bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.”

W.B. Yeats

The Balloon Of The Mind http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1595/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.”

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

Byzantium, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Singing , Dance

“Down the mountain walls
From where pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”

W.B. Yeats

News for the Delphic Oracle http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1546/, st. 3
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Music , Mountain , Appearance

“You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?”

W.B. Yeats

The Spur http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1693/
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Age , Thinking , Rage , Dance

“Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

The Tower http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1700/, I
The Tower (1928)

Imagination , Passion

“This country will not always be an uncomfortable place for a country gentleman to live in, and it is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure."”

W.B. Yeats

Speech, (28 March 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Damage to Property (Compensation) Bill http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192303280011.html

Wisdom , Books , Country

“Because there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.”

W.B. Yeats

The Apparitions http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1589/, st. 1
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Sense

“Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.”

W.B. Yeats

Long-Legged Fly http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1525/, refrain
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Silence , Flying

“Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.”

W.B. Yeats

The Cat And The Moon http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1599/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

Grass , Change

“Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.”

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

V, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”

W.B. Yeats

Speech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192306070006.html

Art , Thinking

“I would mould a world of fire and dew
With no one bitter, grave, or over wise,
And nothing marred or old to do you wrong.”

W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894)

World

“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.”

W.B. Yeats

The Song Of Wandering Aengus http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1690/
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Kiss , Grass , Time , Sun

“Grant me an old man’s frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call.”

W.B. Yeats

An Acre of Grass, st. 3
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Truth

“Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied.”

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

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1471/, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Truth

“Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

Fragments http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1484/, I
The Tower (1928)

God

“The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head.”

W.B. Yeats

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 1–5.

Truth , World , Dreams , Joy

“Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old.”

W.B. Yeats

The Wild Swans At Coole, st. 4
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

Lovers , Heart

“Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”

W.B. Yeats

September 1913 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1576/, st. 3
Responsibilities (1914)

Wolf , Dead

“Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 2
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

Imagination , Future , Dance , Sea

“When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea.”

W.B. Yeats

The Fiddler Of Dooney http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1620/, st. 1
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Dance , Sea

“The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.”

W.B. Yeats

The Sorrow Of Love http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1691/, st. 1
The Rose (1893)

Cry

“I pray — for word is out
And prayer comes round again —
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.”

W.B. Yeats

A Prayer For Old Age, st. 3.
A Full Moon in March (1935)

Passion

“Words alone are certain good.”

W.B. Yeats

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 10.

“I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.”

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

II, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/

Forgiveness , Singing

“All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.”

W.B. Yeats

The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1649/, st. 1
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Heart , Cry

“All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate.
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.”

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

III, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

Love , Women , Children , Gratitude

“Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.”

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

III, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

Men , Faith

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths.”

W.B. Yeats
Clothes