W.B. Yeats: Thing

W.B. Yeats was Irish poet and playwright. Explore interesting quotes on thing.

W.B. Yeats: 510 quotes285 likes

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

The Second Coming (1919)
Context: p>Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.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?</p

“Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.”

W.B. Yeats

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1723/ Responsibilities (1914) Context: Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbours’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

“It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.”

W.B. Yeats

St. 3 In The Seven Woods (1904), Adam's Curse http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1431/ Context: It’s certain there is no fine thing Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be So much compounded of high courtesy That they would sigh and quote with learned looks Precedents out of beautiful old books; Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

“Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

I, st. 1 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/ Context: Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about.

“Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

St. 4 The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/ Context: 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 enamelling 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.

“Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

I, st. 3 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/ Context: My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect is wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”

W.B. Yeats

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

W.B. Yeats

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

W.B. Yeats

“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”

W.B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.”

W.B. Yeats

“They say such different things at school.”