Controversial Sayings

6,263 sayings found from the Modern era

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.

— Robert Frost 1920
Controversial

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

— Robert Frost 1955
Controversial

If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole world, then it isn't worth anything.

— Robert Frost Undated, c. 1950s
Controversial

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

— Robert Frost Undated
Controversial

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.

— William Butler Yeats 1931
Controversial

Republics, Kingdoms, Soviets, Corporate States, Parliaments, are trash. [...] These men, whether six or six thousand, are the core of Ireland, are Ireland itself.

— William Butler Yeats 1939
Controversial

In a battle like Ireland's, which is one of poverty against wealth, we must prove our sincerity by making ourselves unpopular to wealth. We must accept the baptism of the gutter.

— William Butler Yeats c. 1900s-1920s
Controversial

No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.

— William Butler Yeats 1923
Controversial

How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress?

— William Butler Yeats Undated, c. early 20th century
Controversial

The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

— William Butler Yeats 1892
Controversial

My own position is that an idealism or spiritualism which denies magic, and evil spirits even, and sneers at magicians and even mediums (the few honest ones) is an academical imposture.

— William Butler Yeats 1893
Controversial

Your Church has in this matter been far more thorough than the Protestant. It has never denied Ars Magica, though it has denounced it'.

— William Butler Yeats 1893
Controversial

To me all things are made of the conflict of two states of consciousness, beings or persons which die each other's life live each other's death.

— William Butler Yeats 1918
Controversial

Christ was still the half-brother of Dionysius.

— William Butler Yeats 1900
Controversial

Talk to me of originality and, I will turn on you with rage. I am a crowd, I am a lonely man, I am nothing. Ancient salt is best packing.

— William Butler Yeats 1937
Controversial