Quote#Love
In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned
Quote byWilliam Butler Yeats · 1865–1939
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: A Prayer For My Daughter, St. 5.
English (original)
In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise. And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
— William Butler Yeats
More from William Butler Yeats
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all — the colleges I mean — like an opera.
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting …
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, — that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality.... The shallowest …
You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.