1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

And there’s a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. “Hound voices” were they all.

A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one’s self.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna’s children died.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun...

One should not lose one’s temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

Grant me an old man’s frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.