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Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.

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
Love
Beauty
Awaits
Dies
Lesser
Lying
Returning
True
Alter
Earth
Dressed
Best
Spring
Must
Prove
Thing
Loss

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Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
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It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
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If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.
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It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
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Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
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You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.
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When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.
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Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
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What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?
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Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
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I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.
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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.
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Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
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What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?
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A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.
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Though leaves are many, the root is one Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.
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I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
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Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.
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