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While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.

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
Broken
Mankind
Animate
Wind
Inanimate
Tree
Realism
Knew
Grey
Reality
Sat
Stone
Stones

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The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.
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I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
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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.
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People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
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It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
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The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
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Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
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The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.
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A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.
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In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
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Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
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Education is not filling
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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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The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away
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Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide: Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
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But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love Of solitary beds, knew what they were, That passion could bring character enough And pressed at midnighht in some public place Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
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