“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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult." by W.B. Yeats?
W.B. Yeats photo
W.B. Yeats 255
Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939

Related quotes

Frithjof Schuon photo
Duns Scotus photo

“If all men by nature desire to know, then they desire most of all the greatest knowledge of science. So the Philosopher argues in chap. 2 of his first book of the work [Metaphisics]. And he immediately indicates what the greatest science is, namely the science which is about those things that are most knowable. But there are two senses in which things are said to be maximally knowable: either [1] because they are the first of all things known and without them nothing else can be known; or [2] because they are what are known most certainly. In either way, however, this science is about the most knowable. Therefore, this most of all is a science and, consequently, most desirable…”
sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia". Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis.

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia".
Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis.
Quaestiones subtilissimae de metaphysicam Aristotelis, as translated in: William A. Frank, Allan Bernard Wolter (1995) Duns Scotus, metaphysician. p. 18-19

Marcel Pagnol photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“The things that are most precious to us are sometimes the most secret.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Peter Mere Latham photo

“Truth in all its kinds is most difficult to win; and truth in medicine is the most difficult of all.”

Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875) English physician and educator

Book I, p. 60.
Collected Works

Keanu Reeves photo
Bram van Velde photo

“The most difficult thing is not to want anything.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Maggie Stiefvater photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“She will never learn the most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the habit of ignoring the beat.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

"Sie wird das nothwendigste und härteste und die hauptsache in der Musique niemahlen bekommen, nämlich das tempo, weil sie sich vom jugend auf völlig befliessen hat, nicht auf den tact zu spiellen."
Letter to Leopold Mozart (24 October 1777), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/wamma11.txt

Related topics