Great Throughts Treasury

"Of all this host so bound from childhood on."

"Of old the world on dreaming fed."

"Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet."

"On foot, on horseback or in battle-cars."

"Oh, who could have foretold that the heart grows old?"

"Of sun and moon and hollow and wood."

"Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees."

"On limestone quarried near the spot by his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!"

"Once out of nature I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing, but such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enameling to keep a drowsy emperor awake; or set upon a golden bough to sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium of what is past, or passing, or to come."

"On the lone border of the lake once more."

"On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the fairies are at their gayest, and sometime steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides."

"On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them."

"Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution."

"One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep: "Hammer your thoughts into unity." For days I could think of nothing else, and for years I tested all I did by that sentence."

"One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps."

"One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass cannot keep the form where the mountain hare has lain."

"One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or a dog that howls at something a man's eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious of many things that we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away."

"One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again."

"One that is ever kind said yesterday: 'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey, and little shadows come about her eyes; Time can but make it easier to be wise though now it seems impossible, and so all that you need is patience.' Heart cries, 'No, I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain. Time can but make her beauty over again: because of that great nobleness of hers the fire that stirs about her, when she stirs, burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways when all the wild Summer was in her gaze.' Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head, you'd know the folly of being comforted!"

"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."

"Only a sudden flaming word."

"Only the dead can be forgiven; but when I think of that my tongue's a stone."

"Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair."

"Or hurled the little streets upon the great."

"Opinion is not worth a rush; in this altar-piece the knight, who grips his long pear so to push that dragon through the fading light, loved the lady; and it?s plain the half-dead dragon was her thought, that every morning rose again and dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come to pass she would have time to turn her eyes, her lover thought, upon the glass and on the instant would grow wise."

"Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes."

"Or do you long for the dim sleepy ground."

"Or warned you how despairing?"

"Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones."

"Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry."

"Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, come clear of the nets of wrong and right; laugh heart again in the gray twilight, sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn."

"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."

"Paintings of the dolphin-drawn."

"Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry."

"Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain somewhere in ear-shot for the story?s end."

"Pensive they paced along the faded leaves."

"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."

"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."

"Pierced by my glad singing through."

"Pluck till time and times are done. The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun."

"Players and painted stage took all my love, and not those things that they were emblems of."

"Ranking his Druids round him ten by ten."

"Poets and wits about him drew."

"Rewording in melodious guile."

"Remembering that the best I have done."

"Reading some entangled story."

"Rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination."

"Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; the Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; and thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old in dancing silver-sandaled on the sea, sing in their high and lonely melody. Come near, that no more blinded by man?s fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, in all poor foolish things that live a day, eternal beauty wandering on her way. Come near, come near, come near ? Ah, leave me still a little space for the rose-breath to fill! Lest I no more bear common things that crave; the weak worm hiding down in its small cave, the field-mouse running by me in the grass, and heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass; but seek alone to hear the strange things said by God to the bright hearts of those long dead, and learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know. Come near; I would, before my time to go, sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days. A king is but a foolish laborer who wastes his blood to be another?s dream."

"Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery."

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, it's with O' Leary in the grave."