Quotes by William Butler Yeats

I think it better that in times like these a poets mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

You know what the Englishmans 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.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye Thats all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

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.

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand.

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

I heard the old, old, men say all thats beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

There are no strangers here Only friends you havent yet met.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot but make it hot by striking.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

One should not lose ones temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

“Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.”

“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”