1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.

Bred to a harder thingThan Triumph, turn awayAnd like a laughing stringWhereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone,Be secret and exult,Because of all things knownThat is most difficult.

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.

Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.