William Butler Yeats Quotes

When sparrows build and the leaves break forth, My old sorrow wakes and cries.

The sun is new each day.

I'm one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind.

Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

There in the windy flood of morning Longing lifted its weight from me, Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

They say that time heals a broken heart, but time has stood still since we've been apart.

Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.

There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.

Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall

In the first few seconds an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust

they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget; but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!

I wake up every morning and it's like when you break up with somebody who has really broken your heart.

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

Oh to be free of myself, With nothing left to remember, To have my heart as bare As a tree in December; Resting, as a tree rests After its leaves are gone, Waiting no more for a rain at night Nor for the red at dawn.

The mind wants to forget because it weighs so much on the heart and soul. I am tired of crying and feeling so helpless. I want to breathe again -just for a little while.

I rose as from the death that wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow.

I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to loose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news.

No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed; Lay that on your heart, My young angry dear; This truth, this hard and precious stone, Lay it on your hot cheek, Let it hide your tear. Hold it like a crystal When you are alone And gaze in the depths of the icy stone. Long, look long and you will be blessed: No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed.

Forgiveness sets the prisoner free. And realizing that prisoner was you. That's what forgiveness does. It sets you free.

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.