50 Best William Butler Yeats Quotes and Sayings

W. B. Yeats (William Butler Yeats) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer.


Best William Butler Yeats Quotes

1. “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

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2. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

3. “But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

4. “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

5. “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

6. “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

7. “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

8. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

9. “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

10. “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

11. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

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12. “There is another world, but it is in this one.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

13. “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).

Popular William Butler Yeats Quotes

14. “Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

15. “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.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

16. “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).

17. “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

18. “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

19. “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

20. “Everything in nature is resurrection.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

21. “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

Top William Butler Yeats Quotes

22. “If what I say resonates with you, it’s merely because we’re branches of the same tree.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

23. “In dreams begins responsibility.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

24. “The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

25. “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).

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26. “Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

27. “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).

28. “Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

Famous William Butler Yeats Quotes

29. “Myself I must remake.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

30. “How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

31. “Hammer your thoughts into unity.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

32. “What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

33. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

34. “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).

35. “Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

36. “And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey…” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

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37. “All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

38. “A lonely impulse of delight.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

39. “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).

Short William Butler Yeats Quotes

40. “The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

41. “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).

42. “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).

43. “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

44. “And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

45. “Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

46. “I heard the old, old, men say ‘all that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.’” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

47. “Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

48. “Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

49. “What can be explained is not poetry.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).

50. “I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” ~ (William Butler Yeats).


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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar