Quote

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

William Butler Yeats

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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
Thing
Dress
Louder
Every
Sticks
Aged
Men
Dresses
Coat
Sing
Elderly
Unless
Coats
Tattered
Upon
Mortal
Paltry
Hands
Mortals
Clap
Soul
Stick
Demise

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
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Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
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I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember
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Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
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For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.
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It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike.
William Butler Yeats
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And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.
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I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes.
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The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.
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It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.
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I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.
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Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.
William Butler Yeats
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An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.
William Butler Yeats
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Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
William Butler Yeats
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I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
William Butler Yeats
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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
William Butler Yeats
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Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
William Butler Yeats
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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