William Butler Yeats Quotes

1865-1939, Irish Poet, Playwright.
quotes
36
topics
12
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“In dreams begins responsibility.”
VerifiedEpigraph to the book Responsibilities (1914); this was later adapted as the title of the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (1937) by Delmore Schwartz. · evidenceResponsibility
“A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.”
VerifiedThe Pity Of Love; in recent years a statement which might have originated as a misquotation of the first lines of this has been attributed to Oscar Wilde: "To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love." — no occurrence prior to 1999 has yet been located. · evidenceLove
“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
Planning
“An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick”
Age and Aging
“Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.”
VerifiedThe Wild Swans at Coole (1919) · evidenceArmy and Navy
“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
Language
“Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.”
Motivation
“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?”
Sacrifice
“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”
Alcohol and Alcoholism
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
VerifiedThe Second Coming (1919) · evidenceCertainty
“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”
VerifiedSpeech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill. · evidenceCensorship
“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”
VerifiedLetter to Frederick J. Gregg (undated, Sligo, late summer, 1886) · evidenceReason
“We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.”
Happiness
“Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.”
VerifiedLetter to Olivia Shakespear (24 March 1927) · evidencePhilosophers and Philosophy
“To be born woman is to know -- although they do not speak of it at school -- women must labor to be beautiful.”
Women
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.”
Happiness
“A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.”
Creativity
“I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.”
War
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
VerifiedThe Second Coming (1919) · evidenceChaos
“Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.”
Design
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Dreams
“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.”
VerifiedThe Countess Cathleen, last lines (1892) · evidenceTime and Time Management
“I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.”
Family
“I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.”
VerifiedThe Wild Swans at Coole (1919) · evidenceDeath and Dying
“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.”
VerifiedLetter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895) · evidenceWriters and Writing
“The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.”
VerifiedThe Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) · evidencePerfection
“I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.”
Praise