Quote

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
Mystic
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Create
Brush
Hand
Brushes
Whether
Pens
Half
Gentle
Upon
Sensitive
Nonchalance
Lost
Chosen
Chisel
Hands
Critics
Chisels
Mind
Losing
Lit

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
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The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ.
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I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit.
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Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.
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When you are old and gray 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.
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The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold.
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The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
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Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
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I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.
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Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
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Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.
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Who mocks at music mocks at love.
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I weave the shoes of Sorrow: Soundless shall be the footfall light In all men's ears of Sorrow, Sudden and light.
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somewhere in sands of the desert 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 Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
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Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
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God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.
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