1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

We have to do so much, especially in my own country, that our minds gradually cease to be creative, and yet we cannot help it. If our life was a continual Warfare, we would not have taste, we would not know what is good, we would not find hearers and readers.

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness.They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

...nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness.

And what if excess of loveBewildered them till they died?

By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.

Chance and Destiny have between them woven two-thirds of all history, and of the history of Ireland wellnigh the whole. The literature of a nation, on the other hand, is spun out of its heart. If you would know Ireland - body and soul - you must read its poems and stories. They came into existence to please nobody but the people of Ireland. Government did not make them on the one hand, nor bad seasons on the other. They are Ireland talking to herself.

But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of excrement;For nothing can be sole or wholeThat has not been rent.

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children's children shall say they have lied.

A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown.