110+ William Butler Yeats Quotes On Education, Visionary And Mystical

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the few writers to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His works were heavily influenced by Irish mythology and folklore, and he is known for his powerful and lyrical writing style. Following is our collection on famous quotes by William Butler Yeats on education, life, love.

Top 10 William Butler Yeats Quotes

1. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
2. There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
3. There is another world, but it is in this one.
4. Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
5. Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
6. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
7. The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
8. But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
9. 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!
10. Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

William Butler Yeats Image Quotes

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. — William Butler Yeats

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

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. — William Butler Yeats

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. — William Butler Yeats

And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Short Quotes

• Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
• Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
• And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.
• From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
• The falcon cannot hear the falconer
• All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
• The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
• The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
• And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.
• And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Education

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera. — William Butler Yeats

Education is not about filling a pail, it's about lighting a fire. — William Butler Yeats

Education is not filling — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Life

It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike. — William Butler Yeats

Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by — William Butler Yeats

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. — William Butler Yeats

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. — William Butler Yeats

On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by! — William Butler Yeats

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again. — William Butler Yeats

What can be explained is not poetry. — William Butler Yeats

What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...? — William Butler Yeats

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process. — William Butler Yeats

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Love

One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. — William Butler Yeats

Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh. — William Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love. — William Butler Yeats

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. — William Butler Yeats

Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight. — William Butler Yeats

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned. — William Butler Yeats

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain. — William Butler Yeats

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self. — William Butler Yeats

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes. — William Butler Yeats

No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Mystical

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill: For there the mystical brotherhood Of sun and moon and hollow and wood And river and stream work out their will. — 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

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect. — William Butler Yeats

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. — William Butler Yeats

Where there is nothing, there is God. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Heart

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. — William Butler Yeats

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

Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold. — William Butler Yeats

I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem. — William Butler Yeats

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? — William Butler Yeats

When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream. — William Butler Yeats

only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art. — William Butler Yeats

Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. — William Butler Yeats

The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. — William Butler Yeats

Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About World

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. — William Butler Yeats

I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made. — William Butler Yeats

All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake. — William Butler Yeats

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. — William Butler Yeats

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. — William Butler Yeats

What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms? — 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

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. — William Butler Yeats

I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away. — William Butler Yeats

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Tread

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. — William Butler Yeats

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet. — William Butler Yeats

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About Dreams

When you are old and gray 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

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember — William Butler Yeats

From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories. — William Butler Yeats

In dreams begin responsibility. — William Butler Yeats

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness. — William Butler Yeats

There is no deformity But saves us from a dream. — William Butler Yeats

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze. — William Butler Yeats

Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party. — William Butler Yeats

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round. — William Butler Yeats

but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes About People

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. — William Butler Yeats

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements. — William Butler Yeats

All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way? — William Butler Yeats

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks 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

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class. — William Butler Yeats

No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority. — William Butler Yeats

People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals. — William Butler Yeats

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Famous Quotes And Sayings

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. — William Butler Yeats

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

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. — William Butler Yeats

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. — William Butler Yeats

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward. — William Butler Yeats

All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right. — William Butler Yeats

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

I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent? — 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

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher. — William Butler Yeats

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone. — William Butler Yeats

It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield. — William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. — William Butler Yeats

Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while. — William Butler Yeats

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots. — William Butler Yeats

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. — William Butler Yeats

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself. — William Butler Yeats

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

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. — William Butler Yeats

If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree. — William Butler Yeats

It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat. — William Butler Yeats

How can we know the dancer from the dance? — William Butler Yeats

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. — William Butler Yeats

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create. — William Butler Yeats

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering. — William Butler Yeats

An intellectual hatred is the worst. — William Butler Yeats

Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry. — William Butler Yeats

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance? — William Butler Yeats

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk — William Butler Yeats

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote. — William Butler Yeats

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. — William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect. — William Butler Yeats

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away. — William Butler Yeats

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live. — William Butler Yeats

One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again. — William Butler Yeats

The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away — William Butler Yeats

Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb. — William Butler Yeats

I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit. — William Butler Yeats

For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea. — William Butler Yeats

Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery; And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story. — William Butler Yeats

A poet is a good citizen turned inside out. — William Butler Yeats

I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent — William Butler Yeats

The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ. — William Butler Yeats

...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... "When You Are Old And Gray — William Butler Yeats

The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack. — William Butler Yeats

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love. — William Butler Yeats

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas? — William Butler Yeats

And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance. — William Butler Yeats

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart. — William Butler Yeats

I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless. — William Butler Yeats

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth. — William Butler Yeats

Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness. — William Butler Yeats

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed. — William Butler Yeats

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end. — William Butler Yeats

Life Lessons by William Butler Yeats

1. William Butler Yeats taught us to appreciate beauty and truth in life, and to strive for a deeper understanding of our existence.
2. He encouraged us to embrace change, and to be open to new ideas and experiences.
3. He also reminded us to stay connected to our roots, and to always remember where we come from.