1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember

All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

Speak, speak, for underneath the cover thereThe sand is running from the upper glass,And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost.

You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.