William Butler Yeats Quotes

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.

William Butler Yeats

• Life
• Progress
• Journey
• Progressive

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Quotes to Explore

• A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

  

  Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Good
  • Smile
  • Warm

• I want to stop transforming and just start being.

  

  Ursula Burns
  • Want
  • Stop
  • Start

• The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.

  

  C. L. R. James
  • People
  • Great
  • American

• In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the U.S. military's might, three printing firms, and hundreds of trucks.

  

  Yanis Varoufakis
  • Money
  • Military
  • Year

• Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.

  

  Barbara De Angelis
  • You
  • Moment
  • Gift

• Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.

  

  Natalie Clifford Barney
  • Mediocrity
  • Heroism

• There is no bore like a clever bore.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Like
  • Clever
  • Bore

• It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.

  

  Gabriel Marcel
  • Science
  • Right
  • Scientific

• Any film is about heroism: the triumph of good over evil. If you look back at my films, you will see that as a recurring theme.

  

  Salman Khan
  • Good
  • Evil
  • Heroism

• We think that in Mexico, online trading of shares and financial instruments is not going to be as important as it is in the U.S. On days that there is a banking holiday in the U.S., you hardly see any movement here on the stock exchange.

  

  Carlos Slim
  • Important
  • Think
  • Financial

• I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Me
  • Choose
  • Settings

• As a kid at school, I had a lot of really good teachers and I had a lot of really bad teachers, and I just know how much of an impact those can have on a young child. To be one of the good teachers - I want to have that kind of impact.

  

  Rachel Hurd-Wood
  • Good
  • School
  • Bad

• My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Life
  • World

• Near the end of my career, I saw things that didn't make too much sense to me when I was a kid.

  

  Nadia Comaneci
  • Career
  • End
  • Sense

• Being an actor is a good way to earn a living. And to meet fabulous people. It's great to live very comfortably. I've been lucky, I've had a lot of fun with great roles, but it is true that if I were extremely rich, I would stop and I would go to play football on a beach in the Caribbean with my children.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • People
  • Good
  • Great

• I try to get away and take my motorcycle on a ride whenever I can. I'll take my bike out before the show and just cruise.

  

  Zac Brown Band
  • Bike
  • Ride
  • Motorcycle

• The atmosphere of Catholicism in Korea is quite different to the way it is practised and perceived in Europe or the U.S.

  

  Park Chan-wook
  • Different
  • Way
  • Europe

• I guess I was always a ham, and I was anxious to try doing different things. I started doing impressions to make friends at school. I would do them during recess. Maybe some of the kids thought I was being weird, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

  

  Vesta Williams
  • Time
  • Good
  • Different

• Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

  

  Keith Jarrett
  • Music

• I would love to hear Marilyn Manson's fans or something, what their stories would be like.

  

  Jens Lekman

• ' workers then have a strong stake in the preservation of the very system that exploits them because the destruction of that system entails the destruction of their savings.'

  

  David Harvey
  • Strong

• And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.

  

  W. G. Sebald
  • Dead
  • Times
  • Comeback

• And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together-year after year-for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable'-is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner-or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom-or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room-waiting to be discovered!

  

  Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
  • Heart
  • Death
  • Brave

• Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.

  

  William Butler Yeats
  • Life
  • Progress
  • Journey