William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
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Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.
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Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
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My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
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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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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
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We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.
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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.
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The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
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Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest.
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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
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When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.
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Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
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The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.
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I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
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Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
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Eyes spiritualised by death can judge, I cannot, but I am not content.
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Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
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I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again.
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True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
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What can I but enumerate old themes?