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

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

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

Image
A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied.
William Butler Yeats
Image
A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
William Butler Yeats
Image
It seems to me that true love is a discipline.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
William Butler Yeats
Image
There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?
William Butler Yeats
Image
I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats
Image
It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
William Butler Yeats
Image
What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?
William Butler Yeats
Image
Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
William Butler Yeats
Image
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
William Butler Yeats
Image
What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack.
William Butler Yeats