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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

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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
Happens
Parents
Weighed
Seems
Wise
Grandparents
Book
Parent
Grandparent
Something
Heard
Spoken
Never
Books
Hopes
Think
Read
Scales
Thinking
Words
Preparation
Life
Given
Anxiety

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats
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Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.
William Butler Yeats
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When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.
William Butler Yeats
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I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat.
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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Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.
William Butler Yeats
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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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We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
William Butler Yeats
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The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.
William Butler Yeats
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Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.
William Butler Yeats
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Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
William Butler Yeats
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And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place.
William Butler Yeats
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
William Butler Yeats
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My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. This Land of Saints, and then as the applause died out, Of plaster Saints his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.
William Butler Yeats
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
William Butler Yeats
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How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
William Butler Yeats
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For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.
William Butler Yeats
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The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.
William Butler Yeats