1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.