William Butler Yeats quotes - page 5

If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity's displayedI'm looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made. (William Butler Yeats)
May she be granted beauty and yet not; Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe; The heart-revealing intimacy; That chooses right, and never find a friend. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. View quote
William Butler Yeats
All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will. View quote
William Butler Yeats
A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Down the mountain walls From where Pan's cavern is Intolerable music falls. Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear, Belly, shoulder, bum, Flash fishlike nymphs and satyrs Copulate in the foam. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Hands, do what you're bid Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed. View quote
William Butler Yeats
The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air Their hearts have not grown old. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows. View quote
William Butler Yeats
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is. (William Butler Yeats)
One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Time can but make it easier to be wise Though now it seems impossible, and so All that you need is patience. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. View quote
William Butler Yeats
... I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made... View quote
William Butler Yeats
We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love. View quote
William Butler Yeats
And softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone. View quote
William Butler Yeats
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (William Butler Yeats)
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold... View quote
William Butler Yeats
We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face. View quote
William Butler Yeats
Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all. View quote
William Butler Yeats
You say, as I have often given tongue In praise of what another's said or sung, 'Twere politic to do the like by these; But was there ever a dog that praised his fleas? View quote
William Butler Yeats