1865-1939, Irish Poet, Playwright.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
William Butler Yeats – [Creativity]
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
William Butler Yeats – [Love]
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats – [Age and Aging]
And say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats – [Friends and Friendship]
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats – [Dreams]
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
William Butler Yeats – [Design]
Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.
William Butler Yeats – [Motivation]
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.
William Butler Yeats – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats – [Happiness]
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats – [Death and Dying]
I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
William Butler Yeats – [Fanatics and Fanaticism]
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
William Butler Yeats – [Journalism and Journalists]
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.
William Butler Yeats – [Praise]
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.
William Butler Yeats – [Family]
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats – [War]
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats – [Censorship]
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
William Butler Yeats – [Colleges and Universities]
In dreams begin responsibility.
William Butler Yeats – [Responsibility]
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says ''there is no wisdom without leisure.''
William Butler Yeats – [Leisure]
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
William Butler Yeats – [Planning]