Quotes from yeats william butler iv

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.

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.

Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.

Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.

Do not think the fairies are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them.

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.

If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.

They can hardly separate mere learning from witchcraft, and are fond of words and verses that keep half their secret to themselves.

When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.