“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?”

— William Butler Yeats, The Rose, 1893; "The Rose of the World"

About William Butler Yeats

1865 – 1939

Irish poet and Nobel laureate in Literature (1923).

“An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing.”

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”

“Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.”

“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep.”

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

“If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.”

“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.”

“Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.”