Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
—William Butler Yeats
His element is so fine being sharpened by his death, to drink from the wine-breath while our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Wine
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;
A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind,
An old man’s eagle mind.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Age
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.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Journalists, Media, Journalism
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.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Education, Universities, Colleges
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Art
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says “there is no wisdom without leisure.”
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Leisure, Rest
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Death, Death and Dying
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Dance
Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Journeys
Florence Farr once said to me, “If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, ‘this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,’ we could die upon the instant and be united with God”.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: The Present
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Censorship
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God, the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Aging, Time Management, Time
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Sacrifice
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Words
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Family
Why should we honor those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Courage, Self-Discovery
And say my glory was I had such friends.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Friends and Friendship
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Self-Discovery
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Praise
In dreams begin responsibilities.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Dreams, Responsibility
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Happiness, Growth, Joy
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
Thats all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Wine
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Planning, Preparation
Sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind.
—William Butler Yeats
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Love
To be born woman is to know—although they do not speak of it at school—women must labor to be beautiful.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Women
One should not lose one’s temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Anger
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
—William Butler Yeats
Topics: Reason, Heart
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
- George William Russell Irish Author
- Oscar Wilde Irish Poet, Playwright
- Brendan Behan Irish Poet
- Oliver Goldsmith Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet
- James Joyce Irish Novelist
- Jonathan Swift Irish Satirist
- W. H. Auden British-born American Poet
- T. S. Eliot American-born British Poet
- Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
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