Quotes from William Butler Yeats

They must go out of the theatre with the strength they live by strengthened from looking upon some passion that could, whatever its chosen way of life, strike down an enemy, fill a long stocking with money or move a girl's heart.

What's the use of held note or a held line That cannot be assailed for reassurance?

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet ; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

We have to do so much, especially in my own country, that our minds gradually cease to be creative, and yet we cannot help it. If our life was a continual Warfare, we would not have taste, we would not know what is good, we would not find hearers and readers.

He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet.

Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.

Se avessi il drappo ricamato del cielo, Intessuto dell'oro e dell'argento e della luce, I drappi dai colori chiari e scuri del giorno e della notte Dai mezzi colori dell'alba e del tramonto, Stenderei quei drappi sotto i tuoi piedi: Invece, essendo povero, ho soltanto sogni; E i miei sogni ho steso sotto i tuoi piedi; Cammina leggera, perché cammini sui miei sogni.

When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave that place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things. from At the Abbey Theatre

To an Isle in the Water Shy one, shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight Pensively apart. She carries in the dishes, And lays them in a row. To an isle in the water With her would I go. She carries in the candles, And lights the curtained room, Shy in the doorway And shy in the gloom; And shy as a rabbit, Helpful and shy. To an isle in the water With her would I fly.

It is as though the moon changed every thing - Myself and all that I can hear and see; For when the heavy body has grown weak, There is nothing that can tether the wild mind That, being moonstruck and fantastical, Goes where it fancies. From The King's Threshold

Se ciò che io dico risuona in te, è semplicemente perché siamo entrambi rami di uno stesso albero.

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.

REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI Come Queen, Queen of the Pygmies

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

There is another world, but it is in this one.

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

In dreams begin responsibilities.