1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother’s reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.

Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear.

I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window...

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?

But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.

I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.

I can remember meeting of a Sunday night Charles Whibley, Kenneth Grahame, author of ‘The Golden Age,’ Barry Pain, now a well known novelist, R. A. M. Stevenson, art critic and a famous talker, George Wyndham, later on a cabinet minister and Irish chief secretary, and Oscar Wilde, who was some eight years or ten older than the rest.