Quotes by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

Irish poet

Lived from: 1865 - 1939

Category: Poets (Contemporary) Country: FlagIreland

Born: 13 june 1865 Died: 28 january 1939

  • I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
  • When a country produces a man of genius he never is what it wants or believes it wants; he is always unlike its idea of itself.
  • I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
  • 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.
  • I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
  • Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
  • There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
  • The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
  • The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
  • I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
  • An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
  • And say my glory was I had such friends.
  • I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
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  • But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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  • Good conversation unrolls itself like the spring or like the dawn.
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  • Hate is a kind of 'passive suffering', but indignation is a kind of joy.
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  • If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
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  • It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says ''there is no wisdom without leisure.''
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  • A gentleman is a man whose principal ideas are not connected with his personal needs and his personal succes.
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  • A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
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  • A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
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  • All empty souls tend to extreme opinions.
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  • An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
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  • And say my glory was I had such friends.
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  • Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
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  • Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.
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  • Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.
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  • Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.
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  • Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
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  • How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
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  • 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.
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  • I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
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  • I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
    ― William Butler Yeats
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from William Butler Yeats?

The two most famous quotes from William Butler Yeats are:

  • "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
  • "Good conversation unrolls itself like the spring or like the dawn."

When did William Butler Yeats live?

William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 and died in the year 1939.