William Butler Yeats Mind Quotations

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves among silence

What do you think of when alone at night?Do not the things your mothers spoke about,Before they took the candle from the bedside,Rush up into the mind and master it,Till you believe in them against your will?

The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ.

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity....

I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent

What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.

For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?

There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind....

If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

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

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.