William Butler Yeats

Famous quotes containing the words butler yeats, william butler, butler and/or yeats:

“It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
Can be content with argument and deal
In abstract things; or be derided by
A sort of battered kettle at the heel.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

“There is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

“Seventy years have I lived
No ragged beggar man,
Seventy years have I lived,
Seventy years man and boy,
And never have I danced for joy.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

“All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there’s no good complaining, for money’s rant is on,
He that’s mounting up must on his neighbour mount
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own but I pass their schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the time to die?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)