Quote

In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

William Butler Yeats

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Frustration
Vanity
Luck
Mark
Perplexity
Empty
Purse
Left
Purses
Night
Remorse
Work
Toil

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

Image
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.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
William Butler Yeats
Image
Speech after long silence it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom young We loved each other and were ignorant.
William Butler Yeats
Image
My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
William Butler Yeats
Image
There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Acquaintance companion One dear brilliant woman The best-endowed, the elect, All by their youth undone, All, all, by that inhuman Bitter glory wrecked.
William Butler Yeats
Image
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .
William Butler Yeats
Image
on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
William Butler Yeats
Image
The unpurged images of day recede The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.
William Butler Yeats
Image
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
William Butler Yeats
Image
A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought.
William Butler Yeats
Image
We are fastened to a dying animal.
William Butler Yeats
Image
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.
William Butler Yeats
Image
I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.
William Butler Yeats
Image
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
William Butler Yeats
Image
What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?
William Butler Yeats