Top 500 William Butler Yeats Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

156. “I have read somewhere that in the Emperor’s palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.”

— William Butler Yeats

157. “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

158. “I pray-for fashion’s word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.”

— William Butler Yeats

159. “A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew; And half is half and yet is all the scene; And half and half consume what they renew...”

— William Butler Yeats

160. “BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there;.”

— William Butler Yeats

161. “I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”

— William Butler Yeats

162. “Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

— William Butler Yeats

163. “I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?”

— William Butler Yeats

164. “Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.”

— William Butler Yeats

165. “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...”

— William Butler Yeats

166. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

167. “O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.”

— William Butler Yeats

168. “When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.”

— William Butler Yeats

169. “A terrible beauty is born.”

— William Butler Yeats

170. “I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.”

— William Butler Yeats

171. “The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.”

— William Butler Yeats

172. “A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought...”

— William Butler Yeats

173. “Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.”

— William Butler Yeats

174. “Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.”

— William Butler Yeats

175. “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?”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

178. “Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease...”

— William Butler Yeats

179. “We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

181. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

182. “The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeler.”

— William Butler Yeats

183. “While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.”

— William Butler Yeats

184. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

186. “It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

188. “One should not lose one’s temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

190. “In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.”

— William Butler Yeats

191. “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?”

— William Butler Yeats

192. “Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.”

— William Butler Yeats

193. “Man has created death.”

— William Butler Yeats

194. “Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

196. “Education is not filling.”

— William Butler Yeats

197. “The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.”

— William Butler Yeats

198. “No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.”

— William Butler Yeats

199. “I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me.”

— William Butler Yeats

200. “Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?”

— William Butler Yeats