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We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.

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
Closed
Uncertainty
Turned
Keys

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
William Butler Yeats
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I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.
William Butler Yeats
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What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
William Butler Yeats
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Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst much falling he Brooded upon sanctity.
William Butler Yeats
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Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
William Butler Yeats
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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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And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats
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Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
William Butler Yeats
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I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.
William Butler Yeats
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I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
William Butler Yeats
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What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
William Butler Yeats
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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
William Butler Yeats
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Eyes spiritualised by death can judge, I cannot, but I am not content.
William Butler Yeats
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All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.
William Butler Yeats
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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
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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Overcome the Empyrean hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.
William Butler Yeats
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What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?
William Butler Yeats