5 Quotes by W. B. Yeats

Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.O Never give the heart outright,For they, for all smooth lips can say,Have given their hearts up to the play.And who could play it well enoughIf deaf and dumb and blind with love?He that made this knows all the cost,For he gave all his heart and lost.

The Cloths of HeavenHad I the heaven's embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light;I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

We that have done and thought,That have thought and done,Must ramble, and thin outLike milk spilt on a stone.

If we could love and hate with as good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them. But until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,To crawl in her own blood, and go scott-free;The night can sweat with terror as beforeWe pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.