Quotes from William Butler Yeats

Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.

While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

Who mocks at music mocks at love.

Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.

I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.

When we have blamed the wind we can blame love.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.

Joy is the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life or of the work.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Joy is the will which labors, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.