Top 500 William Butler Yeats Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”

— William Butler Yeats

352. “When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another’s truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.”

— William Butler Yeats

353. “Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity...”

— William Butler Yeats

354. “The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.”

— William Butler Yeats

355. “I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.”

— William Butler Yeats

356. “God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.”

— William Butler Yeats

357. “I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.”

— William Butler Yeats

358. “For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.”

— William Butler Yeats

359. “Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.”

— William Butler Yeats

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

— William Butler Yeats

361. “A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.”

— William Butler Yeats

362. “But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?”

— William Butler Yeats

363. “Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.”

— William Butler Yeats

364. “Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear.”

— William Butler Yeats

365. “Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.”

— William Butler Yeats

366. “Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon...”

— William Butler Yeats

367. “You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing.”

— William Butler Yeats

368. “His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.”

— William Butler Yeats

369. “But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.”

— William Butler Yeats

370. “Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.”

— William Butler Yeats

371. “The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.”

— William Butler Yeats

372. “The poet is a good citizen turned inside out.”

— William Butler Yeats

373. “O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.”

— William Butler Yeats

374. “We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936.”

— William Butler Yeats

375. “Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk.”

— William Butler Yeats

376. “I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say: Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay, He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.”

— William Butler Yeats

377. “On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!”

— William Butler Yeats

378. “I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat...”

— William Butler Yeats

379. “For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?”

— William Butler Yeats

380. “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.”

— William Butler Yeats

381. “There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.”

— William Butler Yeats

382. “May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.”

— William Butler Yeats

383. “The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.”

— William Butler Yeats

384. “All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.”

— William Butler Yeats

385. “Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.”

— William Butler Yeats

386. “There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.”

— William Butler Yeats

387. “All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?”

— William Butler Yeats

388. “Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.”

— William Butler Yeats

389. “O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.”

— William Butler Yeats

390. “It’s certain there are trout somewhere – And maybe I shall take a trout – but I do not seem to care.”

— William Butler Yeats

391. “I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.”

— William Butler Yeats

392. “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?”

— William Butler Yeats

393. “I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.”

— William Butler Yeats

394. “Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.”

— William Butler Yeats

395. “When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.”

— William Butler Yeats

396. “Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.”

— William Butler Yeats

397. “And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly...”

— William Butler Yeats

398. “Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again. A great man in his pride Confronting murderous men Casts derision upon Supersession of breath; He knows death to the bone – Man has created death.”

— William Butler Yeats

399. “Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone...”

— William Butler Yeats

400. “While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity...”

— William Butler Yeats