William Butler Yeats Quotes
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He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.
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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
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On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest; And right between these two a girl at play That, it may be, had danced her life away.
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
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I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
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I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
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All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it
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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
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Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?
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All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
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Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
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Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil
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It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.
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I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
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Everything in nature is resurrection.
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The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.
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I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
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Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
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Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?