1865-1939, Irish Poet, Playwright.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats – [Chaos]
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.
William Butler Yeats – [Mystics and Mysticism]
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats – [Certainty]
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.
William Butler Yeats – [Writers and Writing]
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.
William Butler Yeats – [Perfection]
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats – [Reason]
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats – [Alcohol and Alcoholism]
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats – [Time and Time Management]
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats – [Language]
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats – [Friends and Friendship]
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
William Butler Yeats – [Army and Navy]
To be born woman is to know — although they do not speak of it at school — women must labor to be beautiful.
William Butler Yeats – [Women]
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?
William Butler Yeats – [Sacrifice]
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
William Butler Yeats – [Happiness]
When you are old and gray 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.
William Butler Yeats – [Nostalgia]
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
William Butler Yeats – [Words]
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