William Butler Yeats
Quotations

"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

 

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

- on poets

 

"The poet is a good citizen turned inside out."

 

"When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me preparation for something that never happens."

- Autobiography, 1938

 

"It's not a writer's business to hold opinions."

- Speaking to playwright, Denis Johnston

 

"He is all blood, dirt and sucked sugar stick."

- Referring to Wilfred Owen from Letters on Poetry to Dorothy Wellesley

 

" That William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call."