William Butler Yeats Quotes

Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.

When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

I Made my song a coat, Covered with embroideries, Out of old mythologies. From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.

Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West, And the girdle of light is unbound, Your breast will not lie by the breast Of your beloved in sleep.

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe it is enough to make a base man show him at his best, or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

I heard the old, old, men say “all that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.”

She is magnificently ugly, deliciously hideous… in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth and charms the mind. (description of the writer George Eliot – born Mary Ann Evans)

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.