William Butler Yeats Quotes

"One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass cannot keep the form where the mountain hare has lain."

"In dreams begin responsibility"

"I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"Who can tell the dancer from the dance?"

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

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

"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."

"Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will."

"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."

"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!"

"Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it."

"Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry."

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

"This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air."

"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magic illusions in the visions of truth in the depths of the minds when the eyes are closed."

"The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow."

"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

"I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities?"

"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."

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave"