1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart.

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?

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew...

The friends that have I do it wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.