William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.
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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
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For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
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Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
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I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.
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What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
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Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
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I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed.
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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
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I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
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Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
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I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
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And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
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Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains; And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills.
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In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
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Where the world ends The mind is made unchanging, for it finds Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope, The flagstone under all, the fire of fires, The roots of the world.
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The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
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Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
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The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away