"Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might."
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
William Butler Yeats quotes (page 13 of 30)
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence."
Read quote
6 likes
"Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make"
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb."
Read quote
6 likes
"O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out."
Read quote
6 likes
"I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day."
Read quote
6 likes
"I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English."
Read quote
6 likes
"Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all."
Read quote
6 likes
"I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right."
Read quote
6 likes
"Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top."
Read quote
6 likes
"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."
Read quote
6 likes
"When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea."
Read quote
6 likes
"And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind."
Read quote
6 likes
"To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful."
Read quote
6 likes
"A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics."
Read quote
6 likes
"If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil."
Read quote
5 likes
"Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love."
Read quote
5 likes