100+ William Butler Yeats Quotes

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

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Positive, Inspiration And Motivation, Entrepreneurial Spirit

quote education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire william butler yeats Quotes

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

Topics: Buckets, Hills, Companion

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

Topics: Life, World, Chaos, Another World

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

Topics: Dream, Littles, Bags, Cords

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

Topics: Inspirational, Wise, Teamwork, Language And Communication, Language Skills

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

source: - "Gov. Brown Uses State of the State Speech to Push Education Reforms" by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, www.scpr.org. January 24, 2013.

Topics: Inspirational, Graduation, Education, Learning To Read, Joy Of Learning

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

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Friendship, Strangers And Friends

I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.

Topics: Men, Fancy, Myth

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

Topics: Love, Men, Soul, Overhead, Famous Love Poem

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

Topics: Passionate, Conviction, Parliament, Disillusioned, Falcon

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

Topics: Joy, Overcoming, Triumph

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.

Topics: Men, Poetry, Visionaries, Death Bed

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.

Topics: Temptation, Soul, Positive Energy, Inspirational Adversity, Overcome Trials

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

Topics: Men, History, Finding Yourself, Self Realization, Discovering Your True Self

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

Topics: Imagination, Logic, Reason

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

Topics: Taste, Reason, Feels

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

Topics: Wise, Wisdom, Suffering

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

Topics: Wedding, Stars, Memories, Kissing Funny, My First Kiss

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

Topics: Hatred, Intellectual, Social Justice, Opinionated

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

Topics: Poetry, Argument, Quarrels, Make Out

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.

Topics: Believe, Men, Swings, Lanterns

What can be explained is not poetry.

Topics: Life, Poetry

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born a woman is to know- Although they do not talk of it at school - That we must labor to be beautiful.

Topics: Beautiful, Sweet, School

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

Topics: Lasts, Beast, Hours, Bethlehem

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember

Topics: Dream, Oxford, Doe, Colleges And Universities

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

Topics: Food, Drinking, Men, Alcoholism, Irish Beer

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

Topics: Anger, Getting High, Certain

In dreams begins responsibility.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Dream

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

Topics: Guests, Tongue, World

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.

Topics: Love, Eye, Wine, Old Wine, Wine And Love

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

Topics: Soul, Opinion, Empty, Empty Souls

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!

source: - William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.102, Penguin

Topics: Dance, Angel, Flames, Faerie, Sidhe

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

Topics: Joy, Tragedy, Abiding, Irish Author, Being Irish

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

Topics: Inspirational, Happiness, Health, Secret To Happiness, Pleasure And Happiness

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

Topics: Love, Life, Dream, Believe In Your Dreams, I Had A Dream

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

Topics: Friendship, Real Friends, Men, Lasting Friendship, My Friendship

The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

Topics: Wise, Angel, Godly, Faerie, Crafty

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

Topics: Wisdom, Philosophy, Imagination, Reason And Logic

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

source: - The Winding Stair (1929) "In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz"

Topics: Beautiful, Time, Enemy

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

Topics: Beauty, Beautiful, Men

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Topics: Life, Disappointment, Long

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.

Topics: Children, Men, Wife, Harlots

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.

Topics: Beautiful, Dream, Retirement, Overhead, Nodding

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

Topics: Life, Tombstone, Eye, Horsemen, Limestone

Myself I must remake.

Topics: Remakes

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

Topics: Inspirational, Light, Shadow

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

Topics: Wind, Collaboration, Clock

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.

Topics: Dream, Imagination, Vision, Binding

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

Topics: Sex, Soul, Tragedy

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

Topics: Broken Heart, Heart, Broken, My Heart Is Broken, Love And Broken Heart

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.

Topics: Custody

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

Topics: Life, Heart, World

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Dance, Motivational Dance, Tap Dancers

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

Topics: Thinking, Swag, Design, Postage, Postage Stamps

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

Topics: Writing, Light, Cast Away

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

Topics: Time, Men, Sticks, Growing Old, Byzantium

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.

Topics: Life, Black, Gone, Chimneys, Damp

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.

Topics: Life, Morning, Garden, Transience

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

source: - William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.116, Wordsworth Editions

Topics: Wisdom, Butterfly, Optimism, Birds Of Prey

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed....

Topics: Dream, Stars, Work, Flicker

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place....

Topics: Life, Men, Long, Nightfall

Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk

Topics: Wisdom, Art, Fate, Shirk

Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

Topics: Women, Heart, Sides

I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

Topics: Sadness, Heart, Dumb, Foils

I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.

Topics: Mother, Reality, Moon

Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against God's Providence.

Topics: Bird, Wish, Might, Being Old

When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.

Topics: Fear, Heart, Night, Empty Heart

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.

Topics: Life, Men, Giving

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.

Topics: Life, Art, Dirty

And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

Topics: Beauty, God, Heaven

If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.

Topics: Beauty, Doors, Leader

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.

Topics: Beauty, Dream, Children, Transience

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

Topics: Life, Men, Soul, Lock Stock

I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent

Topics: Thoughtful, Thinking, Mind, Steep

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...?

Topics: Life, Hope, Art, Hope To Live

man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality....

Topics: Life, Thoughtful, Reality, Uprooting

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.

Topics: Life, Night, Garden, Gravel, New Faces

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

Topics: Wisdom, Ignorant, Youth

For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

Topics: Life, Wisdom, Moon

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

Topics: Wise, Wisdom, Writing, Most Wise

O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

Topics: Heart, Men, Tears

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.

Topics: Life, Lost Love, Fool

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

Topics: Life, Laughter, Children

I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Topics: Truth, Afterlife, Laughing, Mummy

I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.

Topics: Truth, Men, Self

Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

Topics: Truth, Lying, Men, Heavy Loads, Holy Man

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

Topics: Life, Children, Men

How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

Topics: Truth, Solitude, Care, Loud Music

Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart.

Topics: Dream, Truth, Heart, Toiling

A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

Topics: Life, Men, What Matters

For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?

Topics: Eye, Silence, Mind

Where the world ends The mind is made unchanging, for it finds Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope, The flagstone under all, the fire of fires, The roots of the world.

Topics: Roots, Fire, Miracle

But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.

Topics: Time, Children, Past, Sick Children

I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

Topics: Forgiveness, Dog, Long

Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit; I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.

Topics: Hate, Passion, Hatred

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....

Topics: Life, Pain, Rain

Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.

Topics: Fashion, Song, Loss, Old Song

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness....

Topics: Eye, Play, Age, Hares

I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag....

Topics: Men, Redemption, Maids

My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.

Topics: Happiness, Sex, Soul, Amorous

Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which....

Topics: Happiness, Men, Age

I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?

Topics: Faith, Responsibility, Men, Great Responsibility, Try Me

I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Topics: Faith, Christian, Heart

Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.

Topics: Lying, Spring, Loss

to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief.

Topics: Hate, Evil, May

What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.

Topics: Exercise, Wind, Mind, Caverns

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

Topics: Beauty, Beautiful, Dream, Women's Bodies

Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.

Topics: Beauty, Dream, Women, Dismay, Women Beauty

Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.

Topics: Heart, Body, Tranquility

Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.

Topics: Long, Ancient

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.

Topics: Journey, Numbers, Progress, Spiral Staircases, Staircases

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

Topics: Garden, Jenny, Sides

Our words must seem to be inevitable.

Topics: Writing, Our Words, Inevitable

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

Topics: Peace, Morning, Wings, Hives, Honey Bee

From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories.

Topics: Dream, Memories, Air, Rambling

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

Topics: Ideas, Breakfast, Poet, Incoherence, Bundles

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon..

Topics: Wise, Running, Stars

I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?

Topics: Uncles, Son, Aunt, Grandson, Great Aunt

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

Topics: Beauty, Dream

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.

Topics: Rain, Eye, Blue, Helm, Unsatisfied

What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?

Topics: Memories, Fire, Ashes

There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.

Topics: Dream, Imperfection, Deformity

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

Topics: Dream, Moving, Light, Flare

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

Topics: Children, Hands, Law

It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.

Topics: Women, Crazy, Salad

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

Topics: Wind, Mind, Burden

O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

Topics: Rogues, Fine, Worst

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

Topics: Strong, Soil, Said, Augusta

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

Topics: Fall, Needs, Fine Things

We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.

Topics: Moving, Self, Cities

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,

Topics: Blood, Tides

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

Topics: Healing, Bones, Filled, Softness, Starlight

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.

Topics: Enemy, Emotion, Sweetheart

I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.

Topics: Mother, Heart, Womb, Fanaticism

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

Topics: Hurt, Pain, Kindness

I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .

Topics: Stars, Knowing, Clouds

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

Topics: Dance, Two, Kindred

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

Topics: Doe, Ethics, Cry

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.

Topics: Dark, Fighting, Soul, Back Alleys

My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.

Topics: Teacher, Father, Book, Dyslexia, Dyslexic

Man has created death.

Topics: Men, Biodiversity

All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

Topics: Memories, Soul, Mind, Affront, Empty Souls

O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.

Topics: Heart, Poetry, Knaves

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze....

Topics: Beauty, Dream, Women, Eyelids, Perfect Beauty

I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay

Topics: Gay, Sick, Poetry

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more....

Topics: Happiness, Sweet, Poetry

All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?

Topics: Men, Thinking, People

Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.

Topics: Music, Dirty, Hands, Dirty Hands, Spades

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew....

Topics: Beauty, Kissing, White

But bear in mind your lover's wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there.

Topics: Beauty, Jealousy, Glasses

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Topics: World, Weeping, Faerie, Empty Souls

Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.

Topics: Running, Imagination, What If

All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.

Topics: Art, Perfection, Flying, Vapor

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

Topics: Country, People, Political, Modern Literature, Parnell

Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.

Topics: Florence, Moments, Sincerity, Passing Moments

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.

Topics: Country, Drunk, Ale

The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.

Topics: Artist, Style, Alchemist

I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.

Topics: Believe, Ideas, Doe, Dangerous Ideas

The living can assist the imagination of the dead...

Topics: Imagination

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

Topics: Stars, Men, Soul

We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty...

Topics: Keys, Uncertainty

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

Topics: Art, Men, Meditation

Many ingenious lovely things are gone / That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude...

Topics: Miracle, Lovely, Gone, Lovely Things, Sheer

It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

Topics: Plato, Eye, Imagination, Kettles

Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.

Topics: Wise, Patience, Needs

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone....

Topics: Beauty, Mirrors, Swans

Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion....

Topics: Civilization, Together, Illusion, Manifold, Uprooting

Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.

Topics: Character, Coward, Firsts

And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

Topics: Kissing, Dancing, Pay, Inconstancy

The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.

Topics: Violence, Half, Common

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on.

Topics: Children, Sleep, Storm

now I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.

Topics: Wine, Sleep, Sound, Ephesians

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Topics: Greatness, Moisture, Mouths, Breathless

A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.

Topics: Drinking, Men, Drunk

A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.

Topics: Heart, Mad, Shade

Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy....

Topics: Men, Boys, Optimism, Pure Joy, Choppers

Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun....

Topics: Sun, Virtue

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind....

Topics: Men, Tablets, Ephemeral

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.

Topics: Night, Half, Green, Sod

Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher, Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.

Topics: Eye, Feet, Fire, Stilts, Procession

I say that Roger Casement Did what he had to do, He died upon the gallows But that is nothing new.

Topics: Roger, Killing, Gallows

The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold....

Topics: Children, Heart, Eye, Whitening, Hands Together

I weave the shoes of Sorrow: Soundless shall be the footfall light In all men's ears of Sorrow, Sudden and light.

Topics: Fate, Men, Shoes

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity....

Topics: Fall, Learning, Mind

I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone....

Topics: Sex, Love Is, Doors

There's keen delight in what we have: The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.

Topics: Delight, Pebbles, Heritage

... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.

Topics: Marriage, Bird, Cages, Wild Birds

O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.

Topics: Light, Docks, Beloved

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Topics: Twilight, Heart, Sadness

I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.

Topics: Mother, Light, Body

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more....

Topics: Sweet, Flames, Voice, Obeying

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

Topics: Stars, Twilight, Sadness, White Birds, Rims

When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things ...

Topics: Art, Another Day, Public Opinion, Airy

The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart....

Topics: Eye, Wind, Hair, Sidhe, Unbound

O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.

Topics: Mother, Heart, Wind, Mother Mary

Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

Topics: Dog, Moon, Dolls

What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.

Topics: Running, Wine, Doors

My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.

Topics: Drama, War, Men

Who understood Whatever has been said, sighed, sung, Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed ...

Topics: Said, Solomon, Comprehension

I had this thought a while ago, "My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land." And I grew weary of the sun

Topics: Land, Done, Sun

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