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This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.

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
Hands
Butterfly
Great
Understands
Prison
Garden
Fool
Learning
Poor
Insects
Eye
Purple

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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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.
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Bodily decrepitude is wisdom young We loved each other and were ignorant.
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Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.
William Butler Yeats
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Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
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.
William Butler Yeats
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I have nothing but the embittered sun Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.
William Butler Yeats
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Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.
William Butler Yeats
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How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves that lamp is from the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.
William Butler Yeats
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler Yeats
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Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.
William Butler Yeats
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I summon to the winding ancient stair Set all your mind upon the steep ascent
William Butler Yeats
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Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
William Butler Yeats
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This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
William Butler Yeats
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All the stream that's roaring by Came out of a needle's eye.
William Butler Yeats
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The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.
William Butler Yeats
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The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats
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Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher, Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.
William Butler Yeats