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

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age They were not such a plague when I was young What else have I to spur me into song?
William Butler Yeats
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Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried And fought with the invulnerable tide.
William Butler Yeats
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Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on the sweet far thing.
William Butler Yeats
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You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?
William Butler Yeats
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer
William Butler Yeats
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People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
William Butler Yeats
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Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
William Butler Yeats
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Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against God's Providence.
William Butler Yeats
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I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
William Butler Yeats
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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew And half is half and yet is all the scene And half and half consume what they renew.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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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?
William Butler Yeats
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What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
William Butler Yeats
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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.
William Butler Yeats
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What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
William Butler Yeats
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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.
William Butler Yeats
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It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
William Butler Yeats
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I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
William Butler Yeats
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Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end.
William Butler Yeats