William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.
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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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Our words must seem to be inevitable.
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How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
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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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It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
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What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?
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If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
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Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
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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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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
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The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored; Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.
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All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?
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For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.
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I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.
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A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
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In dreams begins responsibility.
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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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We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
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All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.