Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (471 page)
1942–98 and
Sherrill, Billy
c.
1938–
Stand by your man.
title of song (1968)
1726–1817
Attaquons dans ses eaux
La perfide Albion!
Let us attack in her own waters perfidious Albion!
"L'Ère des Français" (October 1793).
1814–63
The man and the hour have met.
of Jefferson Davis, President-elect of the Confederacy, in 1861
Shelby Foote
The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville
(1991)
1835–1918
And when did you last see your father?
a Roundhead officer addressing the child of a Cavalier family
title of painting (1878), now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
1865–1939
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
"Among School Children" (1928)
Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood."
"Broken Dreams" (1914)
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
"Byzantium" (1933)
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
"The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1939) pt. 3
We were the last romantics.
"Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931" (1933)
The years like great black oxen tread the world.
The Countess Cathleen
(1895) act 4
Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop" (1932)
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
"Down by the Salley Gardens" (1889)
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words.
"Easter, 1916" (1921)
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
"Easter, 1916" (1921)
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
"Easter, 1916" (1921)
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
"Easter, 1916" (1921)
The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart.
"The Fascination of What's Difficult" (1910)
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day.
"From
Oedipus at Colonus
" (1928).
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
"The Ghost of Roger Casement" (1939)
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
"He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" (1899)
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
"In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz" (1933)
My country is Kiltartan Cross;
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor.
"An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" (1919)
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.
"An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" (1919)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1893)
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore…
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1893)
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)
Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot?
"The Man and the Echo" (1939)
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare.
"Meditations in Time of Civil War" no. 6 "The Stare's Nest by my Window" (1928)
And say my glory was I had such friends.
"The Municipal Gallery Re-visited" (1939)
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
"No Second Troy" (1910)
I think it better that at times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right.
"On being asked for a War Poem" (1919)
A pity beyond all telling,
Is hid in the heart of love.
"The Pity of Love" (1893)
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.
"Remorse for Intemperate Speech" (1933)
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas.
"Sailing to Byzantium" (1928)
An aged man is but a paltry thing.
"Sailing to Byzantium" (1928)
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
"Sailing to Byzantium" (1928)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"The Second Coming" (1921)
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"The Second Coming" (1921)
Far-off, most secret and inviolate Rose.
"The Secret Rose" (1899)
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress.
"The Secret Rose" (1899)
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
"September, 1913" (1914)
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
"Song of Wandering Aengus" (1899)
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
"Swift's Epitaph" (1933).
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
"To a Poet, Who would have Me Praise certain bad Poets, Imitators of His and of Mine" (1910)
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam.
"Under Ben Bulben" (1939) pt. 4
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made.
"Under Ben Bulben" (1939) pt. 5
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.
"Under Ben Bulben" (1939) pt. 5
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
"Under Ben Bulben" (1939) pt. 6
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read.
"When You Are Old" (1893)
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
Essays
(1924) "Anima Hominis" sect. 5
of the Anglo-Irish:
We…are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.
speech in the Irish Senate, 11 June 1925
