“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“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.”
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
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot ho…" by W.B. Yeats?
W.B. Yeats255
Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939Related quotes
“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian
De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 286 https://books.google.de/books?id=yrMFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA286&dq=meilleures.<br>Original text:<br>Les meilleures lois ne peuvent faire marcher une constitution en dépit des mœurs ; les mœurs tirent parti des pires lois. C'est là une vérité commune, mais à laquelle mes études me ramènent sans cesse. Elle est placée dans mon esprit comme un point central. Je l'aperçois au bout de toutes mes idées. <br class="br">1830s <br class="br">Context: The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 3.
Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation
The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ's (1652)
“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”
Stephen King (1947) American author
Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer
I Can't Turn You Loose (1965).
Song lyrics
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist
Innkeeper's wife
A Child is Born (1942)
Context: I am not tired.
I am expectant as a runner is
Before a race, a child before a feast day,
A woman at the gates of life and death,
Expectant for us all, for all of us
Who live and suffer on this little earth
With such small brotherhood. Something begins.
Something is full of change and sparkling stars.
Something is loosed that changes all the world.
“You don't rehearse Mr. T, you just turn him loose.”
Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler
Sylvester Stallone.
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