William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
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While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.
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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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Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.
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God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.
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The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.
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Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.
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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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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
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Ah, let us kiss each other's eyes,/And laugh our love away.
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As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.
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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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Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
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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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Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.
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If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
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We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
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BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.
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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
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An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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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.