1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

What were all the world’s alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly...

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks?

All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low...

Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...

He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.

You know what the Englishman’s idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.

Mr. Dowler, could you go through this? Mr. Algie. Don’t answer him, Dowler; he’s going beyond all bounds. Paul Ruttledge. I was a rich man and I could not, and yet I am something smaller than a camel, and this is something larger than a needle’s eye.