Quotes from William Butler Yeats

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

What do we know but that we face one another in this place?

When one gets quiet, then something wakes up inside one, something happy and quiet like the stars.

The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. Oh, when may it suffice?

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born a woman is to know- Although they do not talk of it at school - That we must labor to be beautiful.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away....the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

I am still of [the] opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood--sex and the dead.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.

A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into the Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.