A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown.


William Butler Yeats

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
La...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,<...
W.B. YEATS
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little s...
W.B. YEATS
Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart. -William Butler Yeats.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Who Goes With Fergus?

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's ...
W.B. YEATS
She was a stranger in her own life, a tourist in her own body.
MELISSA DE LA CRUZ
Please be real,” she gasped. “Please don’t be a dream.” “I’m real,” Matthew said huski...
LISA KLEYPAS
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats...
HOWARD NEMEROV
An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I Know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere amon...
W.B. YEATS
Thus the little mermaid learned her world’s greatest paradox: that their currency was beauty, and ...
ESTHER DALSENO
A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her...
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once lo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In his haste to devour her body, Charlie noticed that Callum hadn’t even bothered to remove his ja...
BETH ASHWORTH
He firmly pulled her body against his and he brushed her lips with his. Staring into her eyes, he li...
LANEY SMITH
It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of anot...
JOYCE CAROL OATES
I found her head over here. Her body was blown into the next yard.
ELIZABETH JOHNSON
The body power;The body never respect the personality wearing her ,for her sole mission in life is j...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Love and being in love are not the same. A woman takes the man she loves into her body and absorbs h...
CHLOE THURLOW
A queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it.
SARAH J. MAAS
When she found a place of her own
and packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him...
IAN MCEWAN
He should in humility have asked her why it was that he was naturally a cuckold, why two women of di...
WILLIAM TREVOR
Love and being in love are not the same thing. The woman takes the man she loves into her body and a...
CHLOE THURLOW
His entire body was pleading for reassurance, and if her whole love was not enough what else could s...
ANAïS NIN
I'm a mermaid now, half my body.
EVE BABITZ
It's a sick little creature that carries a child in her body for nine months and starts telling it n...
BOBBY W. MILLER
He closed his eyes as she put her hand on his shoulder, and in that instant, nothing else mattered. ...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
Those upon whom He casts His Glance of Grace become His happy soul-brides. One who recognizes her Lo...
SRI GURU GRANTH SAHIB
Her body had been asleep but now it was wide awake and very aware of every inch of the Iceman. She'd...
CHRISTINE FEEHAN
First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back t...
J.G. BALLARD
A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her c...
VIRGINIA WOOLF
She shivered as he left her to go to the fire, and find water and cloths. He leaned into the light, ...
KRISTIN CASHORE
It's just, for me, the natural standard: a woman should be able to decide over her own body.
LASSE HALLSTROM
The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky l...
NATSUO KIRINO
The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nat...
CAMILLE PAGLIA
Abortion is not health care. A woman has a right to her body, but that is not her body. What about t...
ALVEDA KING
After a while, Anna couldn't hold on any longer and she let go, ... They found her body a few days l...
DEBBIE JOHNSON
Mrs. Jones had received a lot of injuries to her body, all over her body. She had over 60 wounds. Th...
JOE WARD
A married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman.
SOL WACHTLER
She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his...
MARGARET ATWOOD
There’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this bed and going for a run,” he murmured onto her ...
SARAH J. MAAS
The amusement fled from Royce's face and with a groan he pulled her roughly against his chest, crush...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT
Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: brought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every m...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
He cupped his hand around her cheek, and she marveled at how perfectly his palm fit her cheek. His f...
SUMMER HINES
A woman's body is her body and what she wears or does not wear is her choice. Get over it and mo...
RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH
She was burned in multiple places over her body from her head to her toes.
GREGORY CLARK
Cam paused, staring down at her with dilated eyes, the irises bright gold rims around circles of fat...
LISA KLEYPAS
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of jo...
W.B. YEATS
Swimming and biking helps gives your body a break.
DOUG TUMEN
A woman's body is a sacred temple. A work of art, and a life-giving vessel. And once she becomes a m...
SUZY KASSEM
My body screams to stride over to her, wrap my arms around her waist, kiss her until she’s drunk o...
KATIE MCGARRY
A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.
LEO TOLSTOY
No DNA material from any young man tested was present on the body of this complaining woman. Not pre...
WADE SMITH
If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opini...
TONI BENTLEY
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.
MARGARET SANGER
The boy that was swimming behind her knew immediately that she had been attacked by a shark, and eve...
KRISTENA PRATER
I hit her with a body shot. I think that stunned her.
ELIZABETH MOONEY
Her fingertips dug into his shoulders as she pressed closer. Then her lips parted to his, and there ...
SIERRA DONOVAN
Raven felt his power right down to her toes. Her body went boneless, liquid, aching. She was so clos...
CHRISTINE FEEHAN
When I told Mrs. Hudson, she nearly fell out of her chair. We could not have found a better person f...
KEN KAZMAREK
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full devel...
ELIZABETH CATY STANTON
Only now it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him; he could never le...
D.H. LAWRENCE
I couldn’t peel my eyes off her face or her body. Even if she had asked me not to follow her, I wo...
ANGELA RICHARDSON
I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want ...
SARA GRUEN
When she reached the shallow end, Kingsley held out his hand and pulled her up, but she lost her ste...
MELISSA DE LA CRUZ
Nothing is more private than a woman's body; it is her physical, emotional, and moral citadel. S...
LEWIS B. SMEDES
All love tends to become like that which it loves. God loved man; therefore He became man. For nine ...
FULTON J. SHEEN
I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes...
BRENE BROWN
Some say that a woman that trades her body for money is a whore, if that is the case, then a woman t...
CARL R WHITE
this is her body this is her blood
SAUL WILLIAMS
Nesta looked at the king with death twining around his hands, then down at Cassian. And covered Cass...
SARAH J. MAAS
I believe that everybody has the right to view his or her own body as a palette. However, I think in...
CAMILLE PAGLIA
Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.
RAINBOW ROWELL
Comin' through the rye, poor body, Comin' through the rye, She draigl't a' her petticoatie, ...
ROBERT BURNS
It wasn't the tattoo that had changed her, had given her repossession of her body. It was her action...
MELISSA MARR
Know her mind and you can have her body, know her heart and you have her soul.
JUDY GARLAND
He reached over and took Taylor’s hand. She did not pull her hand away.
He moved his hand up ...
MICHAEL GRANT
In order to avoid a next mistake, one must measure a person by his/her heart and moral compass not b...
FRANCESCO NICHOLAS CECE
Everyone is a salesman and each has a commodity: the shoemaker, his shoes; the chef cook, his food; ...
JOHN B. BEJO
A butler supplies food to nourish your body, but a writer nourishes your mind through writing.
DEBASISH MRIDHA
Jenny, she's aw weet, peer body, Jenny's like to cry; For she hes weet her petticoats In...
MISS SUSANNA BLAMIRE AND MISS CATHERINE GILPIN
Claire tipped her head back, and this time he found her lips. It was, she thought, supposed to be a ...
RACHEL CAINE
But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion....
MARGARET ATWOOD
Maddox held Ashlyn for several hours as she napped, hopefully reviving body and soul. Time was his e...
GENA SHOWALTER
Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat with her legs apart in the copious easy-chair besid...
JAMES JOYCE
But let's not be casual about this body, okay?" She nuzzled him back. "It may be your soul that I lo...
LAINI TAYLOR
A woman's body never really belongs to herself. As an infant, my body was my mother's, a det...
ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN
There's a greater power and charisma when a woman is aware of her sexual prowess when it's n...
MICKALENE THOMAS
Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and somet...
KRISTIN CASHORE
You have to penetrate a woman's defenses. Getting into her head is a prerequisite to getting into he...
BOB GUCCIONE
Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - TH...
TIM O'BRIEN
The lonely widow gives her body to a stranger; but without her husband, she is never satisfied.
ATHARVA VEDA
When she wound her fingers in his hair to draw her body against his, he stilled for breath, and she ...
RENEE AHDIEH
He knelt down beside her and slowly rubbed a soft, muculent mix on her bare skin like a sculptor at ...
MIRETTE BAGHAT
Mikhail sat up, letting her go so that he could push the sheet from her slender body. Her mind was b...
CHRISTINE FEEHAN
Anyway, they took her body to McBurney's Funeral Home in Motley. They'll be planting her tomorrow.
PETER HEDGES
If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, tha...
JUDITH JAMISON
The rope longed-for her beloved, the ceiling hook.

The suspended body; a harbinger of go...
CHIRAG TULSIANI
Few in the Nineties would have ventured to prophesy that the remote dim singer of the Celtic Twiligh...
AUSTIN CLARKE
He had not even done the fledgling courtesy of shredding open a major artery, anointing himself in t...
THOMM QUACKENBUSH
Because Melissa McCarthy actually is a fat woman, she isn't allowed to make brash statements abo...
JENNIFER ARMINTROUT

More William Butler Yeats

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage i...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that Willia...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetr...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
To be born woman is to know -- although they do not speak of it at school -- women must labor to be ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar tho...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unsti...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You shall go with me, newly-married bride,
And gaze upon a merrier multitude.
White-armed Nual...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort tha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covere...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A DEEP-SWORN VOW Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine; Ye...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opini...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In dreams begin responsibility.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In dreams begins responsibility.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious m...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambas...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of jo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly becaus...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alon...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Befo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy whe...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart. -William Butler Yeats.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take th...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, becau...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
All empty sould tend toward extreme opinions.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift,...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
And say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I call on those that call me son,Grandson, or great-grandson,On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
We were the last romantics -- chose for themeTraditional sanctity and loveliness.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. S...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my moth...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's mor...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Who stole your wits awayAnd where are they gone?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
It is not permitted to a man who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his onl...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk throug...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFro...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy whe...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have no question:It is enough, I know what fixed the stationOf star and cloud.And knowing all, I c...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
My fiftieth year had come and gone,I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,And open book and ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Test every work of intellect or faith,And everything that your own hands have wroughtAnd call those ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Nobody running at full speed has either a head or a heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always be having arguments.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a man's eye...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Time drops in decay,Like a candle burnt out,And the mountains and woodsHave their day, have their da...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I hear the wind a blowI hear the grass a grow,And all that I know, I know.But I will not speak, I wi...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Once more the storm is howling, and half hidUnder this cradle-hood and coverlidMy child sleeps on.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Now that my ladder's goneI must lie down where all ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
TOIL and grow rich, what's that but to lie with a foul witch and after, drained dry, to be brought t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he wil...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and u...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and wha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An intellectual hatred is the worst.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intent;But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of ex...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
But where's the wild dog that has praised his fleas?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves among silence
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But gr...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees --Those dying gen...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Of conflicts with others we make retorica, of conflicts with ourselves poetry
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the ha...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed t...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls now;Let us part, er...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . .
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before w...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
May she be granted beauty and yet notBeauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,Or hers before a loo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .I hear it in the deep heart's core.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I'd as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I heard the old, old, men say "all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
There's more enterpriseIn walking naked.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Farewell -- farewell,For I am weary of the weight of time.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
When such as I cast out remorseSo great a sweetness flows into the breastWe must laugh and we must s...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once lo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Out of Ireland have we come.Great hatred, little room,Maimed us at the start.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I dri...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Style, personality -- deliberately adopted and therefore a mask -- is the only escape from the hot-f...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps,...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I a...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance ...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mo...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gif...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
That William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the moun...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opini...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
La...
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Miss Flora McFlimsey of Madison Square, Has made three separate journeys to Paris, And her fat...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER
But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Whi...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER
The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the ...
WILLIAM FRANCIS BUTLER
Doubtless God could have made a better berry (than the strawberry), but doubtless God never did
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER
But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare,When at the same moment she had on a dressWhich cost ...
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER
Really and truly -- I've nothing to wear.
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER