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And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.
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
Bird
Wisdom
Gloomy
Prey
Butterfly
Optimism
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
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
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
Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
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
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills.
William Butler Yeats
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.
William Butler Yeats
The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
William Butler Yeats
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.
William Butler Yeats
Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
William Butler Yeats
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats
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
How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves that lamp is from the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
William Butler Yeats
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.
William Butler Yeats
Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.
William Butler Yeats
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
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
William Butler Yeats
And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
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
