Quote

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.

William Butler Yeats

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
Mystic
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Like
Quiet
Times
Statesman
War
Statesmen
Truth
Mouth
Better
Mouths
Right
Silent
Think
Gift
Thinking
Poet

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

Image
We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
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.
William Butler Yeats
Image
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Image
A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
William Butler Yeats
Image
But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
William Butler Yeats
Image
What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
William Butler Yeats
Image
. . . you may think I waste my breath Pretending that there can be passion That has more life in it than death
William Butler Yeats
Image
Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
William Butler Yeats
Image
The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.
William Butler Yeats
Image
... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
William Butler Yeats
Image
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
William Butler Yeats
Image
Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.
William Butler Yeats
Image
While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?
William Butler Yeats
Image
It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil
William Butler Yeats