William Butler Yeats Quotes
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to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief.
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Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.
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It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
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Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.
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I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.
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Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
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There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
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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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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
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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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How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
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Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease.
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One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.
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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.
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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
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Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.
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Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Breed out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
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Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
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The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
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My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.
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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.