William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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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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John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
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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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All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.
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If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
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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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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
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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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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
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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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Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.
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How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
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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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Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
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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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In dreams begins responsibility.
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Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
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The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.
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What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
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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.