William Butler Yeats Men Quotations

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

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

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise.

I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots

I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities?

For men improve with the years;And yet, and yet,Is this my dream, or the truth?

One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?

We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.

Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy....

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind....

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.

Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.

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.

For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.

The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.

Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.

I weave the shoes of Sorrow: Soundless shall be the footfall light In all men's ears of Sorrow, Sudden and light.

All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low....

An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.

Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place....

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then....

A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.

How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.

A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.

For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.

somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night....

My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.

Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

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 am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.

Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.

Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.

...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... "When You Are Old And Gray

Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought....

Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

Man has created death.

All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?

No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.

It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.

Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul

I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.

You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag....

O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?

Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which....

While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity....

Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade...