1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

What the world’s million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

Everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say: Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay, He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.

In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.