"The friends that have it I do wrongWhenever I remake a songShould know what issue is at stake,It is myself that I remake."

William Butler Yeats Literature See all quotes by William Butler Yeats →

React to this quote

More by William Butler Yeats

“Do what you will. I do not understand stops. I write my work so completely for the ear that I feel helpless when I have to measure pauses by stops & commas.”

“The years like great black oxen tread the world,And God the herdsman goads them on behind,And I am broken by their passing feet.”

“You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.”

“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 those old reprobates the words.”

“Alphabetical Listing of Poems by Yeats”

“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 people on the ridge of the earth.”

Resonant Thoughts

"First of all,” said Dr. Nacozi to me, “I want you to know that I realize you have a brilliant mind.” “Me?” I said, feeling shocked. “Yes, you,” he said. “And maybe you haven’t done that well in school…"

— Victor Villaseñor

Literature1940

#humor

"Raised in a working-class, immigrant family, I didn’t have access to poetry. I want to write poetry that my mother can read, or poetry that I would have loved as a little boy. I think of myself as a p…"

— Richard Blanco

Literature1968

#family