Irish poet (1865-1939)
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.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.
W. B. YEATS
remarks on Coinage Bill 1926 Second Stage, March 3, 1926
Do not think the fairies are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them.
W. B. YEATS
Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Lines Written in Dejection", The Wild Swans at Coole
I had a conviction, which indeed I have still, that one's verses should hold, as in a mirror, the colours of one's own climate and scenery in their right proportion; and, when I found my verses too full of the reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of setting things right, not as I should now by making my rhythms faint and nervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a certain wintry wildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a board.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
speech on the Censorship of Films Bill, Jun. 7, 1923
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.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Choice", The Winding Stair and Other Poems
They can hardly separate mere learning from witchcraft, and are fond of words and verses that keep half their secret to themselves.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Byzantium", The Winding Stair and Other Poems
What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? 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
The Celtic Twilight
Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Two Songs from a Play", The Tower
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Second Coming"
Come away, O human child!
To the woods and waters wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
W. B. YEATS
"The Stolen Child", Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
God spreads the heavens above us like great wings,
And gives a little round of deeds and days.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Land of Heart's Desire
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Countess Cathleen
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to Olivia Shakespear, Mar. 24, 1927
The most celebrated fairy doctors are sometimes people the fairies loved and carried away, and kept with them for seven years; not that those the fairies love are always carried off--they may merely grow silent and strange, and take to lonely wanderings in the "gentle" places.
W. B. YEATS
"Witches, Fairy Doctors", Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry