W.B. Yeats: Trending quotes

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W.B. Yeats: 510 quotes285 likes

“Love comes in at the eye.”

“My wretched dragon is perplexed.”

“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.”

“I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.”

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. 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.”

“Hearts are not to be had as a gift, hearts are to be earned.”

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield”

“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”

“Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.”

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”

“One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.”

“Myself I must remake.”

“If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.”

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful”

St. 5 <br class="br">Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/ <br class="br">Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats <br class="br">Context: In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;<br>Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned<br>By those that are not entirely beautiful;<br>Yet many, that have played the fool<br>For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise.<br>And many a poor man that has roved,<br>Loved and thought himself beloved,<br>From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

“I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love”

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/ <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) <br class="br">Context: I know that I shall meet my fate<br>Somewhere among the clouds above;<br>Those that I fight I do not hate,<br>Those that I guard I do not love;<br>My county is Kiltartan Cross,<br>My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,<br>No likely end could bring them loss<br>Or leave them happier than before.<br>Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,<br>Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,<br>A lonely impulse of delight<br>Drove to this tumult in the clouds;<br>I balanced all, brought all to mind,<br>The years to come seemed waste of breath,<br>A waste of breath the years behind<br>In balance with this life, this death.

“Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”