William Butler Yeats Quotes

All the best parts of art come from pain turned to celebration.

I have been drawn to stories that are attempting to turn suffering into beauty.

I should be glad of loneliness And hours that go on broken wings,A thirsty body, a tired heart And the unchanging ache of things,If I could make a single song As lovely and as full of light,As hushed and brief as a falling star On a winter night.

Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.

My first fear was about the devil, when I was around fire, something I saw in a movie. I think it's about pain, in whichever form it comes.

The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

Art is spiritual.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

I am interested in suffering and, in particular, the Buddhist idea that in pain, you can find beauty.

From out of pain, beauty.

i am with the roots of flowers entwined, entombed sending up my passionate blossoms as a flight of rockets and argument; wine churls my throat, above me feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky clutching photographs of the planets, but i seek only music and the leisure of my pain

She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueller. And the day after tomorrow is beautiful.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

The only domain where the divine is visible is that of art, whatever name we choose to call it.

Filter your pain through the brevity of this life and the unending beauty of the next.

[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear…which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

"Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly"... "And if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."

People think I'm crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness... Dostoyevsky had it right: 'Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.' Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.

I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.

The secret of endurance is to remember that your pain is temporary but your reward will be eternal.

Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.