Yeats Quotes

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

...I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl -- a cousin I think -- having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew [my grandfather] would pass near four o'clock on the way to his dinner, said to him, 'If I were you and you were a little girl, I would give you a doll.

An Irish Airman foresees his DeathI Know that I shall meet my fatet Somewhere among the clouds above;t Those that I fight I do not hatet Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,t No likely end could bring them losst Or leave them happier than before.t Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,t Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,t A lonely impulse of delightt Drove to this tumult in the clouds;t I balanced all, brought all to mind,t The years to come seemed waste of breath,A waste of breath the years behindt In balance with this life, this death.

But the power in this case is real indeed. You doubt the mystery and power of these aircraft and their markings? They are aeons old and yet they still operate!” t“You’ve seen them fly? Where do they go? I am wondering if there is a city we can reach.” t“Before you woke from your coffin, they flew indeed. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. What does that suggest?” t“Um. Some rough beast is slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born, maybe?” t“No doubt the spirit of prophecy escapes your lips! It must be prophecy because I cannot grok what you are saying.” t“Sorry. Won’t happen again. It suggests a search pattern.

He believes, but he does not believe: the impossibility of believing is the impossibility which he accepts most reluctantly, but still it is there with the other impossibilities of this world which is too full of weeping for a child to understand.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

What can be explained is not poetry.

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.

Christopher Hitchens