"I went out to the hazelwood because..." - Quote by William Butler Yeats

“I weave the shoes of Sorrow:Soundless shall be the footfall lightIn all men's ears of Sorrow,Sudden and light.”

“My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd."This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out,"Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.”

“Because of something told under the famished hornOf the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay,Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.”

“Life's no brief candle-it's a splendid torch!”

“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.”

“I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.”

“And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.”

“One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.”

“Some burn damp faggots, others may consumeThe entire combustible world in one small roomAs though dried straw, and if we turn aboutThe bare chimney is gone black outBecause the work had finished in that flare.”