I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He's had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youthOr an old man upon a winter's night.


William Butler Yeats

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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
A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plun...
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