W.B. Yeats
Greatest English-language poet of the 20th century
Most quoted
"Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire?"
— from No Second Troy, 1916
"We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of O'Connell, the people of Charles Stewart Parnell."
— from Speech, 1922
"Things said or done long years ago, / Or things I did not do or say / But thought that I might say or do, / Weigh me down, and not a day / But something is recalled, / My conscience or my vanity appalled."
— from Vacillation, 1933
All quotes by W.B. Yeats (350)
Do you not see how, everywhere, the coming of this new age is foretold?
The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all.
I am of a broken world where the fragments are many, and the light is thin.
The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work.
We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of O'Connell, the people of Charles Stewart Parnell.
I have known more men destroyed by the pursuit of exact knowledge than by drink.
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth.
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of gaining an advantage by it.
People who lean on us and people who identify themselves with us never have to wait long for an opportunity of making us feel wretched.
An artist is a person of some importance, but not so important as a poet.
The Irishman in me loves the sound of words.
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind - sex and the dead.
My temptation is quiet.
You that Mitchell's weight of man, From his own side, to the sun, And the other side of the sun, And the other side of the sun, And the other side of the sun.
Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill.
Contemporaries of W.B. Yeats
Other Literatures born within 50 years of W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).