1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery; And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.

All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more....

I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.

I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?