Top 500 William Butler Yeats Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.”

— William Butler Yeats

102. “The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.”

— William Butler Yeats

103. “The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all.”

— William Butler Yeats

104. “If we could love and hate with as good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them. But until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

106. “A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

— William Butler Yeats

107. “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 blessed.”

— William Butler Yeats

108. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

109. “Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.”

— William Butler Yeats

110. “It’s certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.”

— William Butler Yeats

111. “Farewell – farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

113. “Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart.”

— William Butler Yeats

114. “Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.”

— William Butler Yeats

115. “Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead.”

— William Butler Yeats

116. “I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.”

— William Butler Yeats

117. “Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.”

— William Butler Yeats

118. “I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.”

— William Butler Yeats

119. “All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.”

— William Butler Yeats

120. “Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.”

— William Butler Yeats

121. “I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

123. “Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.”

— William Butler Yeats

124. “Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand...”

— William Butler Yeats

125. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

126. “For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”

— William Butler Yeats

127. “Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.”

— William Butler Yeats

128. “For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.”

— William Butler Yeats

129. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

130. “But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.”

— William Butler Yeats

131. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

133. “Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?”

— William Butler Yeats

134. “Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make.”

— William Butler Yeats

135. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

136. “Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude.”

— William Butler Yeats

137. “I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.”

— William Butler Yeats

138. “The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind’s eye than any face But that of Christ.”

— William Butler Yeats

139. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

140. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

141. “Love comes in at the eye.”

— William Butler Yeats

142. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

144. “Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while...”

— William Butler Yeats

145. “A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.”

— William Butler Yeats

146. “When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream...”

— William Butler Yeats

147. “Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.”

— William Butler Yeats

148. “Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night...”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

150. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats