William Butler Yeats

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

    Like the moon her kindness is.
    If kindness I may call
    What has no comprehension in’t,
    But is the same for all
    As though my sorrow were a scene
    Upon a painted wall.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Poetry and music I have banished,
    But the stupidity
    Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
    Makes no demand.
    I bend my body to the spade
    Or grope with a dirty hand.
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    ‘But where can we draw water,’
    Said Pearse to Connolly,
    ‘When all the wells are parched away?
    O plain as plain can be
    There’s nothing but our own red blood
    Can make a right Rose Tree.’
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    To know is to know the things belonging to one’s peace.
    —Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

    Sang a bone upon the shore;
    “A man if I but held him so
    When my body was alive
    Found all the pleasure that life gave”:
    A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)