William Butler Yeats Quotes

I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.

This is how the fire starts. This is how we burn.

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.

You've gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine. Taste this. It won't make you wild. It's fire. Give up, if you don't understand by this time that your living is firewood.

What showers arise, blown with the windy tempest of my heart

And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

And I say to my heart: rave on.

I'm very bad, but I like to dance.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.

No - the light in Tamani's eyes was much more than a reflection. It was the fire that melted her anger and devastated her resolve, every single time she saw it.

I don’t know how you can stand it. Over and over again, the same sadness—” He lifted her up. “The same ecstasy—” “The same fire that kills everything—” “The same passion that ignites it all again. You don’t know. You can’t remember how wonderful—” “I’ve seen it. I do know.

I burn the way money burns.

Only Thee That I want thee, only thee---let my heart repeat without end. All desires that distract me, day and night, are false and empty to the core. As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light, even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry ---'I want thee, only thee'. As the storm still seeks its end in peace when it strikes against peace with all its might, even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love and still its cry is ---'I want thee, only thee'.

The whole world's on fire.

The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye.

Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?

The great sins and fires break out of me like the terrible leaves from the bough in the violent spring. I am a walking fire, I am all leaves.

I dream in fire but work in clay.

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn't always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.

Anger is like fire. It burns all clean.

Love." She looked at me with those blue eyes. "Isn't it astonishing how confused and complicated such a small,simple word is? It attracts so many other things, doesn't it, that stick to it like barnacles on rock...fear, guilt. Need. You can't even see the rock anymore. I imagine love in its purest form is a rare thing.

About, about, in reel and rout the death fires danced at night.