Quotes from William Butler Yeats

In dreams begins responsibility.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.

Irish poets, learn your trade,Sing whatever is well made.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

But what is Whiggery?A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mindThat never looked out of the eye of a saintOr out of drunkard's eye.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.Have I not seen the loveliest woman bornOut of the mouth of Plenty's horn,Because of her opinionated mindBarter that horn and every goodBy quiet natures understoodFor an old bellows full of angry wind?

On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut:Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.Horseman, pass by!

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Was it for this the wild geese spreadThe gray wing upon every tide;For this that all that blood was shed,For this Edward Fitzgerald died,And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,All that delirium of the brave?Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Players and painted stage took all my love,And not those things that they were emblems of.

Labor is blossoming or dancing whereThe body is not bruised to pleasure soul,Nor beauty born out of its own despair,Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?

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

Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy kind delight.

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

Hands, do what you're bid:Bring the balloon of the mindThat bellies and drags in the windInto its narrow shed.

Under bare Ben Bulben's headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

All perform their tragic play,There struts Hamlet, there is Lear.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with gold and silver light.

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.

Come let us mock at the greatThat had such burdens on the mindAnd toiled so hard and lateTo leave some monument behind,Nor thought of the leveling wind.

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