1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is;All mere complexities,The fury and the mire of human veins.

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end....

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes....

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.