What Quote » Poet Quotes » Quotes by William Butler Yeats »

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's th...  
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.  
A shudder in the loins engenders there the broken wall, the burning ro...  
A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent; but love has pitch...  
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.  
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unles...  
An intellectual hatred is the worst.  
And say my glory was I had such friends.  
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get ...  
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under ...  
Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the i...  
Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest...  
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described...  
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by strikin...  
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.   Education
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to t...  
Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Eve...  
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but s...  
How can we know the dancer from the dance?  
I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an ...  
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interes...  
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of...  
I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.  
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emp...  
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is eno...  
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child a...  
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like ...  
I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; tho...  
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, f...  
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscienc...  
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the p...  
In dreams begins responsibility.   Dreams
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the s...  
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain lei...  
Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But j...  
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.  
Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.  
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed...  
My country is Kiltartan Cross; my countrymen Kiltartan's poor.  
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreadin...  
Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmar...  
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more...   Anger
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.  
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at t...  
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by...   Imagination
Swift has sailed into his rest; savage indignation there cannot lacera...  
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and th...  
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate i...  
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and pas...  
The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.  
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.  
The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of...  
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shad...  
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeis...  
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they ar...  
The years like great black oxen tread the world,And God, the herdsman ...  
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon...  
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.  
Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I ha...  
This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the los...  
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.  
To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at scho...  
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suff...  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.  
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding so...  
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel w...  
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, ...  
Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man ma...   History
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. I...  
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some pe...  
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to...