Quote

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

William Butler Yeats

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Literature
Burke
Political
Stocks
Best
Swift
Country
Petty
Great
Ireland
People
Intelligence
Created
Modern
Parnell

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

Image
Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
William Butler Yeats
Image
A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
William Butler Yeats
Image
An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?
William Butler Yeats
Image
Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude.
William Butler Yeats
Image
And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
William Butler Yeats
Image
What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
William Butler Yeats
Image
This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Things fall apart the center cannot hold.
William Butler Yeats
Image
You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age They were not such a plague when I was young What else have I to spur me into song?
William Butler Yeats
Image
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
Image
Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
William Butler Yeats
Image
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot but make it hot by striking.
William Butler Yeats
Image
The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
William Butler Yeats
Image
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