Quotes from W.B. Yeats

He suffers with man as some firm-souled man suffers with the woman he but loves the better because she is extravagant and fickle. His descending power is neither the winding nor the straight line but zigzag, illuminating the passive and active properties, the tree's two sorts of fruit: it is the sudden lightning, for all his acts of power are instantaneous.

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.

Only in rapid and subtle thought, or in faint accents heard in the quiet of the mind, can the thought of the spirit come to us but little changed; for a mind, that grasps objects simultaneously according to the degree of its liberation, does not think the same thought with the mind that sees objects one after another.

I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

Socrates. The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I also doubted.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." ( Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven )

What can be explained is not poetry.

WINE comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and sigh.