“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.””
Quotes by William Butler Yeats
“Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.””
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.””
The Land of Heart's Desire
“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.””
The Wind Among the Reeds
“Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.O Never give the heart outright,For they, for all smooth lips can say,Have given their hearts up to the play.And who could play it well enoughIf deaf and dumb and blind with love?He that made this knows all the cost,For he gave all his heart and lost.””
In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age
“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.””
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. Born in Dublin, he was deeply influenced by the Irish nationalist movement and the mysti...