1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart...

Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love’s pleasure drives his love away, The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind...

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman’s face, or worse – The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.

A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.