1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

...I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl -- a cousin I think -- having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew [my grandfather] would pass near four o'clock on the way to his dinner, said to him, 'If I were you and you were a little girl, I would give you a doll.

The intellect of man is forced to choosePerfection of the life, or of the workAnd if it take the second must refuseA heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

The Coming of Wisdom with TimeThough leaves are many, the root is one;Through all the lying days of my youthI swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;Now I may wither into the truth.

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where,Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty thing, or a thingHeroically lost, heroically found.No matter what disaster occurredShe stood in desperate music wound,Wound, wound, and she made in her triumphWhere the bales and the baskets layNo common intelligible soundBut sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

There is a war between the living and the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it.("The Queen And The Fool")

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?