Quotes by William Butler Yeats
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
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.
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!
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.
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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.
I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.
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.
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
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.
