Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

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.

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.

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old.

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

I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Pardon, old fathers.

In dreams begins responsibility. 4

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

The fascination of what’s difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

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.

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.

Since Adam’s fall but needs much laboring.

I heard the old, old men say, “All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.”

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

I said, “A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones.”

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind delight.

O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head, You’d know the folly of being comforted.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea.

And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light.

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book. 3

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.