William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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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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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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I have nothing more to give you than my heart. Spanish saying Hearts are not to be had as a gift hearts are to be earned.
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For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
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My wretched dragon is perplexed.
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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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Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
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Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
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To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.
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I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?
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I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.
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Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.
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He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.
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The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!
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When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.
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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
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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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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
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All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.
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What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
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The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.