Quotes from William Butler Yeats

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

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.

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.

A statesman is an easy man He tells his lies by rote A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat So stay at home and drink your beer And let the neighbours vote.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

In dreams begin responsibility.

From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.

The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

The Government does not intend these things to happen, the Commission on whose report the Bill was founded did not intend these things to happen, but in legislation intention is nothing, and the letter of the law everything, and no government has the.

No man has ever lived that had enoughOf children's gratitude or woman's love.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

Locke sank into a swoon;The Garden died;God took the spinning-jennyOut of his side.

I pray—for fashion's word is outAnd prayer comes round again—That I may seem, though I die old,A foolish, passionate man.

Whatever flames upon the nightMan's own resinous heart has fed.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consumeThe entire combustible world in one small room.

It's certain that fine women eatA crazy salad with their meat.

Odor of blood when Christ was slainMade all Platonic tolerance vainAnd vain all Doric discipline.