I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept. William Butler Yeats More Quotes by William Butler Yeats More Quotes From William Butler Yeats Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. William Butler Yeats disrespect inspirational past 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. William Butler Yeats class country book I cast my heart into my rhymes, William Butler Yeats flower rose heart This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air. William Butler Yeats london soul air Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning. William Butler Yeats flower morning children There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. William Butler Yeats purple midnight wings I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead. William Butler Yeats two death sex Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair. William Butler Yeats love-you hair men I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. William Butler Yeats significant-things artist beautiful I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me William Butler Yeats spit faces Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made. William Butler Yeats eye dark heart We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh. William Butler Yeats mirrors dream hands When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed. William Butler Yeats blessed heart laughing And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight. William Butler Yeats lonely loneliness time No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority. William Butler Yeats conquer people art That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain. William Butler Yeats growing-up pain men The Father and His angelic hierarchy William Butler Yeats angel eye father Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time. William Butler Yeats weary farewell weight Through winter-time we call on spring, William Butler Yeats summer spring death In life courtesy and self-possession, and in the arts style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind, for both arise out of a deliberate shaping of all things and from never being swept away, whatever the emotion into confusion or dullness. William Butler Yeats self life art
