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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

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Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.
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When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
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But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
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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.
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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
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...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... When You Are Old And Gray
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Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.
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The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease.
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While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.
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A lonely impulse of delight
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Education is not about filling a pail, it's about lighting a fire.
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?
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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
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An intellectual hate is the worst.
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Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.
William Butler Yeats
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O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
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