William Butler Yeats Quotes

Irish - Poet June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1939

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

William Butler Yeats

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

William Butler Yeats

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

William Butler Yeats

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

William Butler Yeats

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

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

William Butler Yeats