William Butler Yeats

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

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.

The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all

What do we know but that we face one another in this place?

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.

Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.

What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?