Quote

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

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
Sound
Articulate
Thought
Noisy
Schoolmasters
Together
Martyr
Work
Bankers
Idler
World
Sounds
Idlers
Harder
Clergymen
Sweet
Martyrs
Call
Pavement

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Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.
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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
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Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
William Butler Yeats
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Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
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There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
William Butler Yeats
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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep And the young lie long and dream in their bed.
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True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
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Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
William Butler Yeats
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Though leaves are many, the root is one Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.
William Butler Yeats
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When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
William Butler Yeats
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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.
William Butler Yeats
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I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
William Butler Yeats
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Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil
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I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.
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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
William Butler Yeats
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Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.
William Butler Yeats
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The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.
William Butler Yeats