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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

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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
Life
Balance
Dying
Behinds
Balanced
Behind
Breath
Death
Breaths
Come
Seemed
Mind
Brought
Years
Waste

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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.
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Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love
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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
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Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.
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Things fall apart the center cannot hold.
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
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Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
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We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
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Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead
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Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on the sweet far thing.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.
William Butler Yeats
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I can exchange opinion with any neighbouring mind, I have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer's had, But O! my Heart could bear no more when the upland caught the wind I ran, I ran, from my love's side because my Heart went mad.
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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
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Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
William Butler Yeats