1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die

This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.

I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .

If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.

I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.

There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.