William Butler Yeats Poet Quotations

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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.

To be born woman is to know -- although they do not speak of it at school -- women must labor to be beautiful.

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

The poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk