Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
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," l.1-8 (1920)
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.
¶ Letter to Katharine Tynan (30 Aug 1888)
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
¶ “Easter 1916,” l. 57–59
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
¶ “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” l.54–55 (1938)