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Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.

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
Exchange
Logical
Wrote
Neither
Christ
Process
Book
Socrates
Writing
Buddha

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
William Butler Yeats
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All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it
William Butler Yeats
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
William Butler Yeats
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Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.
William Butler Yeats
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One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
William Butler Yeats
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The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeler.
William Butler Yeats
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May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
William Butler Yeats
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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?
William Butler Yeats
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It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
William Butler Yeats
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I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.
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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We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
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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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
William Butler Yeats
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I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.
William Butler Yeats
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We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
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I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
William Butler Yeats
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When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
William Butler Yeats