William Butler Yeats

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

There is only one romance the Soul's.

Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.

One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.

I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

I have nothing more to give you than my heart. Spanish saying Hearts are not to be had as a gift hearts are to be earned.

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

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

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

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.

If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

Everything we look upon is blest.

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

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.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

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

This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.