Kiana > Kiana's Quotes

“There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet.”
― W.S. Gilbert

“Myself I must remake.”
― Yeats

“I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds

“There are no strangers, only friends you have not met yet.”
― William Butler Yeats

“...I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made...”
― William Butler Yeats

“Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.”
― W. B. Yeats

“When You Are Old"


WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
― W.B. Yeats

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― Lord Byron

“The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.”
― Lord Byron

“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”
― George Gordon Byron

“I had a dream, which was not at all a dream.”
― George Gorden Lord Byron

“To have joy, one must share it.”
― Lord Byron

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“You are the music while the music lasts.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”
― T.S. Eliot

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems

“I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
― Virginia Woolf

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees
and changing leaves.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway