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Top WB Yeats Quotes

Browse top 186 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by WB Yeats.

Favorite WB Yeats Quotes

1. "What do we know but that we face one another in this place?" ~ W.B. Yeats
2. "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
3. "Where the wave of moonlight glossesThe dim gray sands with light,Far off by furthest RossesWe foot it all the night,Weaving olden dances,Mingling hands and mingling glancesTill the moon has taken flight;To and fro we leapAnd chase the frothy bubbles,While the world is full of troublesAnd is anxious in its sleep. . . ." ~ W.B. Yeats
4. "...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die." ~ W.B. Yeats
5. "Cuchulain stirred,Stared on the horses of the sea, and heardThe cars of battle and his own name cried;And fought with the invulnerable tide." ~ W.B. Yeats
6. "And softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone." ~ W.B. Yeats
7. "Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away." ~ W.B. Yeats
8. "When they had finished they made me take notes of whatever conversation they had quoted, so that I might have the exact words, and got up to go, and when I asked them where they were going and what they were doing and by what names I should call them, they would tell me nothing, except that they had been commanded to travel over Ireland continually, and upon foot and at night, that they might live close to the stones and the trees and at the hours when the immortals are awake." ~ W.B. Yeats
9. "To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart" ~ W.B. Yeats
10. "The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching." ~ W.B. Yeats
11. "A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown." ~ W.B. Yeats
12. "The living can assist the imagination of the dead..." ~ W.B. Yeats
13. "TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIREWHILE I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,My heart would brim with dreams about the timesWhen we bent down above the fading coalsAnd talked of the dark folk who live in soulsOf passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;And of the wayward twilight companiesWho sigh with mingled sorrow and content,Because their blossoming dreams have never bentUnder the fruit of evil and of good:And of the embattled flaming multitudeWho rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,And with the clashing of their sword-blades makeA rapturous music, till the morning breakAnd the white hush end all but the loud beatOf their long wings, the flash of their white feet." ~ W.B. Yeats
14. "The woods of Arcady are dead,And over it their antique joy;Of old the world on dreaming fed;Gray Truth is now her painted toy." ~ W.B. Yeats
15. "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?" ~ W.B. Yeats
16. "Labour is blossoming or dancing whereThe body is not bruised to pleasure soul." ~ W.B. Yeats
17. "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
18. "Wine enters through the mouth,Love, the eyes.I raise the glass to my mouth,I look at you,I sigh." ~ W.B. Yeats
19. "Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?" ~ W.B. Yeats
20. "What can be explained is not poetry." ~ W.B. Yeats
21. "Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party." ~ W.B. Yeats
22. "there is no truthSaving in thine own heart.-from "The Song of the Happy Shepherd" ~ W.B. Yeats
23. "At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flitFlames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,Where blood-begotten spirits comeAnd 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
24. "[The banshee (from ban [bean], a woman, and shee [sidhe], a fairy) is an attendant fairy that follows the old families, and none but them, and wails before a death." ~ W.B. Yeats
25. "Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart." ~ W.B. Yeats
26. "THOUGH you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes." ~ W.B. Yeats
27. "A daughter of a King of Ireland, heardA voice singing on a May Eve like this,And followed half awake and half asleep,Until she came into 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.And she is still there, busied with a danceDeep in the dewy shadow of a wood,Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top." ~ W.B. Yeats
28. "The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all" ~ W.B. Yeats
29. "Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream." ~ W.B. Yeats
30. "Time drops in decayLike a candle burnt out.And the mountains and woodsHave their day, have their day;But, kindly old routOf the fire-born moods,You pass not away." ~ W.B. Yeats
31. "...nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness." ~ W.B. Yeats
32. "Irish poets, learn your trade,sing whatever is well made,scorn the sort now growing upall out of shape from toe to top." ~ W.B. Yeats
33. "Ze bedzie slawny, o tym wiedziano juz w szkole:Dla wspóluczniów byl wiecej niz zwyklym kolega;Wiec cel sobie wytyczyl i wytezal wole,Mlodziencze lata spedzil w znoju i mozole;"Co z tego? - duch Platona zaspiewal. - Co z tego?"Ksiazki, które napisal, znikaly spod lady,Po ilus latach zdobyl bez trudu wiekszegoDosc pieniedzy, by co dzien móc jadac obiady,I przyjaciól w potrzebie nie skapiacych rady;"Co z tego? - duch Platona zaspiewal. - Co z tego?"Spelnil mu sie nareszcie kazdy sen szczesliwy -Mial zone, córke, syna, dom i ptaków swiergotW ogródku, gdzie mógl sadzic kapuste i sliwy,Wokól siebie - poetów orszak halasliwy;"Co z tego? - duch Platona zaspiewal. - Co z tego?""Spelnilem swe zadanie - pomyslal na starosc. -Zgodnie z dziecinnym planem cale zycie zbieglo;Choc glupcy sie wsciekali, wykazalem staloscI w czyms tam osiagnalem przeciez doskonalosc";Ale duch jeszcze glosniej zaspiewal: "Co z tego?" ~ W.B. Yeats
34. "On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them." ~ W.B. Yeats
35. "I did not, but i saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen." ~ W.B. Yeats
36. "THE ROSE OF THE WORLDWHO 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.We and the labouring world are passing by:Amid men's souls, that waver and give placeLike the pale waters in their wintry race,Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,Lives on this lonely face.Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:Before you were, or any hearts to beat,Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;He made the world to be a grassy roadBefore her wandering feet." ~ W.B. Yeats
37. "I Sing what was lost and dread what was won,I walk in a battle fought over again" ~ W.B. Yeats
38. "A king is but a foolish labourerWho wastes his blood to be another's dream.-from "Fergus and the Druid" ~ W.B. Yeats
39. "But he heard high up in the airA piper piping away,And never was piping so sad,And never was piping so gay." ~ W.B. Yeats
40. "The Cat and the Moon The cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moon,The creeping cat, looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For, wander and wail as he would,The pure cold light in the skyTroubled his animal blood.Minnaloushe runs in the grassLifting his delicate feet.Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?When two close kindred meet,What better than call a dance?Maybe the moon may learn,Tired of that courtly fashion,A new dance turn.Minnaloushe creeps through the grassFrom moonlit place to place,The sacred moon overheadHas taken a new phase.Does Minnaloushe know that his pupilsWill pass from change to change,And that from round to crescent,From crescent to round they range?Minnaloushe creeps through the grassAlone, important and wise,And lifts to the changing moonHis changing eyes." ~ W.B. Yeats
41. "I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless." ~ W.B. Yeats
42. "The Scholars"Bald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love's despairTo flatter beauty's ignorant ear.They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?" ~ W.B. Yeats
43. "I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams." ~ W.B. Yeats
44. "There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason")" ~ W.B. Yeats
45. "We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet." ~ W.B. Yeats
46. "I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,Our stitching and unstitching has been naught." ~ W.B. Yeats
47. "There was present that night at Henley's, by right of propinquity or of accident, a man full of the secret spite of dullness, who interrupted from time to time and always to check or disorder thought;" ~ W.B. Yeats
48. "it's a long lane that has no turning." ~ W.B. Yeats
49. "Ah, you may tell the girls that they must now get their turn. My punishment was to last till I was thought worthy of a reward for the way I done my duty. You'll see me no more." ~ W.B. Yeats
50. "We can only begin to live when we conceive life asTragedy." ~ W.B. Yeats
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Today's Quote

You know, he doesn't have to be the only one bopped in the noggin when noggin-boppin' time rolls around."
Author: Christopher Moore

What Did W.B. Yeats Talk About?

Ear
Wit
Here
Thin
Hear
Old
Hen
Heart
Per
Sin
Hey
Thou
Win
She
Star
Ought
Though
Ten
Low
Ring
Sing
Lit
Use
Soul
Los
Eye
Con
Air
Tan
End
Away
Son
Body
Night
Hand
May
Mad
Read
Light
Lie
Cause
Name
Sea
Hall
Able
Ways
Yes
Dance
King
Fire

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