Quote

For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

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
Like
Wisdom
Cloud
Upon
Clouds
Living
Property
Power
Looked
Everything
Moon
Visage
Come
Glory
Stain
Something
Dead
Incompatible
Life
Blood
Stains

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.
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Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams there is no truth Saving in thine own heart.
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Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
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Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.
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I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
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It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
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When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.
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Education is not filling
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Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
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I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
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O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
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The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
William Butler Yeats
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I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
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And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.
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for never yet Has lover lived, but longed to wive Like them that are no more alive.
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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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I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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