We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy. William Butler Yeats More Quotes by William Butler Yeats More Quotes From William Butler Yeats 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. William Butler Yeats religious age art Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade. William Butler Yeats floats shade men We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body. William Butler Yeats body brain believe What can I but enumerate old themes? William Butler Yeats theme Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence. William Butler Yeats silence long moving All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake. William Butler Yeats flying perfection art Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience. William Butler Yeats wise patience needs It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel. William Butler Yeats eye plato imagination Many ingenious lovely things are gone / That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude. William Butler Yeats lovely miracle gone A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics. William Butler Yeats meditation men art We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty. William Butler Yeats uncertainty keys The living can assist the imagination of the dead. William Butler Yeats imagination I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. William Butler Yeats doe believe ideas The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style. William Butler Yeats alchemist style artist rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination. William Butler Yeats rhetoric imagination Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk William Butler Yeats shirk painter poet What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair? William Butler Yeats despair artist dream The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it. William Butler Yeats good-luck house long Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. William Butler Yeats tongue stones thinking Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant. William Butler Yeats wisdom song art
