"A line will take us hours maybe;..." - Quote by William Butler Yeats
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... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.
More by William Butler Yeats
“You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.”
“There where the course is,Delight makes all of the one mind,The riders upon the galloping horses,The crowd that closes in behind.”
“We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.”
More on Art
“The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.”
“Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.”
“Art raises its head where creeds relax.”
More on Work
“Understand the difference between being at work and working.”
“There's a lot of young guys coming along, but I'd like to say to the various financiers, don't forget the senior guys. The senior guys and gals are there, willing to do their best work for you.”
“It may be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.”