1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.

My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.

No expectation fails there, No pleasing habit ends, No man grows old, no girl grows cold, But friends walk by friends.

I have no question:It is enough, I know what fixed the stationOf star and cloud.And knowing all, I cry. . . .

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.