"The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark."
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Quote collection
William Butler Yeats quotes (page 8 of 30)
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
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"The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray."
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"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
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"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."
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"I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself."
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"Talent perceives differences; genius, unity."
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"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."
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"It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is"
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"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."
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"Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible."
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"What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour."
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"Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come."
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"Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them."
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"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera."
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"Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie."
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"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."
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"Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn."
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"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."
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"I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree."
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