William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeatswas an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1865
CitySandymount, Ireland
CountryIreland
I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other; and in this case to understand is to love.
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.
Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.
I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He's had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youthOr an old man upon a winter's night.
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
I am content to live it all againAnd yet again, if it be life to pitchInto the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,A blind man battering blind men.
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is;All mere complexities,The fury and the mire of human veins.
No expectation fails there,No pleasing habit ends,No man grows old, no girl grows cold,But friends walk by friends.
No expectation fails there, No pleasing habit ends, No man grows old, no girl grows cold, But friends walk by friends.
May God be praised for womanThat gives up all her mind,A man may find in no mana friendship of her kind.
Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.
A man who does not exist,A man who is but a dream.
A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intent;But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of excrement;For nothing can be sole or wholeThat has not been rent.
Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.