Quotes to inspire and reflect

Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast, Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.

A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of drunkard’s eye.

Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

What they undertook to do They brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass.

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love’s pleasure drives his love away, The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.

Whatever flames upon the night Man’s own resinous heart has fed.

Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

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

O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

But is there any comfort to be found? Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

What shall I do with this absurdity— O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail?

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 6

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will.

If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

It’s certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.

That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart 5 ; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

Hands, do what you’re bid: Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broomsticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

And I may dine at journey’s end With Landor and with Donne.

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor.

Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.

Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.