Q - WB Yeats
Posted on 28th January 2021
William Butler Yeats 1865 – 1939 was an Irish poet at the forefront of English language 20th Century literature. Late in his life, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
‘Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking’
‘Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart’
‘I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams’
‘Those that I fight I do not hate. Those that I guard I do not love’
‘Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people’
‘Man can embody truth but he cannot know it’
‘There are no strangers here, only friends you have not met yet’
‘Life is a long preparation for something that never happens’
‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’
‘Hearts are not had as a gift, hearts are to be earned’
‘All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions’
‘How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart’
‘Literature is always personal, always one man’s vision of the world, one man’s experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others’
‘Choose your companions from the best, who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill’
‘An aged man is but a paltry thing. A tattered coat upon a stick’
‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire’
‘Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart’
‘The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time’
‘Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet’
‘Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing or that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing’
‘In dreams begin responsibilities’
‘I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind’
Share this post: