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He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.

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
Dazzling
Seen
Endured
Footed
Beauty
Rewarded
Wanderer
Wing
Pangs
Dread
Foreseen
Wings
Wanderers
Greatest
Imaginable
Shall
Unforeseen

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.
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What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?
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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
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For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.
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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
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Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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I had this thought a while ago, My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land. And I grew weary of the sun
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Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
William Butler Yeats
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I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.
William Butler Yeats
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Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
William Butler Yeats
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Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.
William Butler Yeats
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.
William Butler Yeats
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
William Butler Yeats
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We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
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Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
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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.
William Butler Yeats