W. B. Yeats

Literature Irish 1865 – 1939 97 quotes

An Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature, a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival.

Quotes by W. B. Yeats

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The Second Coming 1919

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Attributed

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Among School Children 1939

I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

A Cloak, a Boat, and a Shoes 1899

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

Attributed

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

A Coat 1913

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

The Trembling of the Veil 1923

We are, I think, the last of the romantics.

Ideas of Good and Evil 1901

Poetry is a kind of speech for the soul.

Attributed

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

The Second Coming 1919

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

Attributed

There is no country in the world where the people are so ready to give up their own opinions and take on those of others as in Ireland.

Autobiographies 1903

All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

Easter, 1916 1916

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

Ideas of Good and Evil 1903

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Per Amica Silentia Lunae 1917

Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

A Dialogue of Self and Soul 1931

The arts are not a method of government. They are a method of discovery.

Ideas of Good and Evil 1903

I have been in the midst of it, and I have seen it all, and I have come out of it with a great deal of knowledge.

Speech to the Irish Senate 1922

The more we are in the world, the more we are out of it.

Ideas of Good and Evil 1903

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

A Drinking Song 1910