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We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936

William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
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Playwright
Poet
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Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Dies
Poets
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Loneliness
Death
Letters
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May
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Olivia
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Shakespeare
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Letter

More quotes by 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 long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.
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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.
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There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
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The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats
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As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.
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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I summon to the winding ancient stair Set all your mind upon the steep ascent
William Butler Yeats
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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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I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.
William Butler Yeats
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My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
William Butler Yeats
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We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
William Butler Yeats
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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy.
William Butler Yeats
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Where the world ends The mind is made unchanging, for it finds Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope, The flagstone under all, the fire of fires, The roots of the world.
William Butler Yeats
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O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.
William Butler Yeats
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Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams
William Butler Yeats
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Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?
William Butler Yeats
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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