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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
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
Works
Bring
Getting
Words
Custody
Back
Secondary
Take
Senses
Right
Meaning
Always
Poetry
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
William Butler Yeats
We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
William Butler Yeats
I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no moreSoon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
William Butler Yeats
All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one.
William Butler Yeats
Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.
William Butler Yeats
I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?
William Butler Yeats
Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.
William Butler Yeats
Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Breed out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
William Butler Yeats
Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by
William Butler Yeats
Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.
William Butler Yeats
Our words must seem to be inevitable.
William Butler Yeats
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep And the young lie long and dream in their bed.
William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.
William Butler Yeats
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.
William Butler Yeats
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats
I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.
William Butler Yeats
The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.
William Butler Yeats
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest.
William Butler Yeats
