When
you are old and grey 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.
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old |
One
man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old |
Love
fled
And paved upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old |
Unwearied
still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have now grown old.
William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole |
We
make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but out of the
quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
Essays |
Even
when the poet seems most himself
he is never the bundle
of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he
has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
William Butler Yeats
Essays and Introductions |
In
dreams begins responsibility.
William Butler Yeats
Responsibilities. |
We
are
no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We
are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people
of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the
modern literature of this country. We have created the best
of its political intelligence.
William Butler Yeats
Speech in Irish Senate, in debate on divorce. |
Think
like a wise man but express yourself like the common people.
William Butler Yeats
Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy
Wellesley. |
It's
not a writer's business to hold opinions.
William Butler Yeats
Remark to playwright Denis Johnston. |