Quotes by "William Butler Yeats"

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.

Joy is the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye; that's all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die.

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.

A statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat; So stay at home and drink your beer And let the neighbours vote.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

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.

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart

Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. There the Loves a circle go, The flaming circle of our days, Gyring, spiring to and fro In those great ignorant leafy ways; Remembering all that shaken hair And how the wingèd sandals dart, Thine eyes grow full of tender care: Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while; For there a fatal image grows That the stormy night receives, Roots half hidden under snows, Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of unresting thought; Flying, crying, to and fro, Cruel claw and hungry throat, Or else they stand and sniff the wind, And shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass. - The Two Trees