Quotes from William Butler Yeats

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

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.

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.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.

And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

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

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

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.

The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.

Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away.

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more.

Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.

My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.

Time can but make her beauty over again.

In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.