Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
— William Butler YeatsLetter to Lady Elizabeth Pelham (4 January 1939))
Use itEssay/GS4: truth is lived through conduct more than known.
Quotes / Thinkers / William Butler Yeats
Thinker · 9 quotes
William Butler Yeats quotes for UPSC
9 sourced quotes by William Butler Yeats on emotions & self-control, truth & wisdom, power & corruption, culture, art & literature, work, excellence & success, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
✓ Attributions checked against Wikiquote's sourced list
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
— William Butler YeatsThe Great Day
Use itEssay on revolutions; change of rulers without change of system keeps oppression alive.
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
— William Butler YeatsPer Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): Anima Hominis, part v
Use itEssay on art; inner conflict creates art, outer conflict only rhetoric.
The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
— William Butler YeatsThe Choice, st. 1
Use itEssay/Life on work-life balance; choosing perfection of work or of life.
All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
Use itEssay/GS1 on revolutions; sacrifice transforms history, a terrible beauty is born.
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.
— William Butler Yeats"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Use itLife: a calm, still mind helps others see themselves clearly.
Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.
Use itEssay on prolonged conflict; endless sacrifice can harden hearts.
To be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief. If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
Use itGS4/Life: hatred is the chief evil; a mind free of hate withstands any storm.
You that would judge me, do not judge alone This book or that, come to this hallowed place Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; Think where man's glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.
— William Butler YeatsThe Municipal Gallery Revisited, st. 7
Use itLife: true glory lies in the friends one has had.