Quotes from W.B. Yeats

I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses.

Each county has usually some family, or personage, supposed to have been favoured or plagued, especially by the phantoms, as the Hackets of Castle Hacket, Galway, who had for their ancestor a fairy, or John-o'-Daly of Lisadell, Sligo, who wrote "Eilleen Aroon

I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodies, their stiff stays, their toes whereupon they spin like peg-tops, above all upon that chambermaid face. They might have looked timeless, Remeses the Great, but not the chambermaid, that old maid history. I spit! I spit! I spit!

And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all disheveled wandering stars.

I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words.

I command you to leave me at once, for your ideas and phantasies are but the illusions that creep like maggots into civilizations when they begin to decline, and into minds when they begin to decay.

The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It has grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale night-gown; She drew in the heavy casement And pushed the latches down...

I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown.

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; Remember the wisdom out of the old days: *Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude*.

our souls are love, and a continual farewell

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

The Irish word for fairy is sheehogue [sidheóg], a diminutive of "shee" in banshee. Fairies are deenee shee [daoine sidhe] (fairy people).

All propositions which set all the truth on one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain.

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse.

Times are too dangerous for me to encourage men to risks I am not prepared to share or approve.

Opinion is the enemy of the artist because it arms his uninspired moment against his inspiration.

THE CELTIC TWILIGHT by W. B. YEATS 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.

The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away.

They sang but had not human tune nor words

The stars are threshed, and the soub are threshed from their husks.' WILLIAM BLAKE

I cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers whether they are used consciously by the master of magic or half unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician, and the artist.

He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone. (A Prayer For Old Age)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep — W.B. Yeats, from "When You are Old," The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats . (Scribner; 2nd Revised edition September 9, 1996) Originally published 1889.

triple solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness