William Butler Yeats Quotes

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.

Step by step, heart to heart, left right left. We all fall down like toy soldiers. Bit by bit, torn apart, we never win.

Everything I loved became everything I've lost.

Aand in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief?

I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don't know why that is, but to me, that's country music.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

That most unfortunate war, which I deeply deplore.

No victory is free from sorrow.

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery

War is about strategic agendas and epic battles that define nations and shape history. War is about courage and heroism, but it is also about pain and suffering and sorrow and tragedy

Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind.

I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

With maternal love, life makes a promise at dawn that it can never hold. You are forced to eat cold food until your days end. After that, each time a woman holds you in her arms and against her chest, these are merely condolences. You always come back to yell at your mother's grave like an abandoned dog. Never again, never again, never again.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

I cling to my memories of glorious desperation.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

Look, it's a monster. He's walking alone. Look, he's pulling something out of his pocket. He threw it on the ground. Let's go see what it is. It's a black box. You open it... ok... Look, it's sorrow, misery and pain. It's loneliness and longing. Boy, he'll be sorry he lost these.

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.