Quote

I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.

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
Self
Bones
Long
Satisfaction
Men
Brings
Stay
Attention
Cannot
Truth
Better
Craving

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
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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.
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Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
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Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
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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A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.
William Butler Yeats
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What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
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We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
William Butler Yeats
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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
William Butler Yeats
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My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. This Land of Saints, and then as the applause died out, Of plaster Saints his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.
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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Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
William Butler Yeats
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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats
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The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
William Butler Yeats
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Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude.
William Butler Yeats
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The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.
William Butler Yeats
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
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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Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
William Butler Yeats
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
William Butler Yeats