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All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.

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
World
Image
Perfection
Sake
Lasts
Condense
Last
Vapor
Art
Endeavor
Human
Analysis
Humans
Flying

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
William Butler Yeats
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O sweet everlasting Voices, be still Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more.
William Butler Yeats
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And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
William Butler Yeats
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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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I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
William Butler Yeats
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Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.
William Butler Yeats
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Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats
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For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
William Butler Yeats
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I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats
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Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
William Butler Yeats
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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
William Butler Yeats
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Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher, Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
William Butler Yeats
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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
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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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!
William Butler Yeats
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Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
William Butler Yeats
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One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
William Butler Yeats
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I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.
William Butler Yeats
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THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.
William Butler Yeats