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Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
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
Away
Ancient
Best
Writers
Never
Looked
Goodnight
Life
Lived
Drawn
Second
Breath
Turn
Breaths
Turns
Gay
Eye
Quickly
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
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How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?
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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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It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
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Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
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All the stream that's roaring by Came out of a needle's eye.
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Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.
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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
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I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
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We are fastened to a dying animal.
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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
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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.
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How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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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.
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Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
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Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
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I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
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Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
William Butler Yeats
I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit.
William Butler Yeats
I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again.
William Butler Yeats
