If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler YeatsRead
I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the paradox of an atheist's struggle with existential mysteries and fears.
William Butler Yeats discusses the complexity of human belief systems through the lens of George Bernard Shaw, suggesting that even those who reject traditional beliefs, like atheists, may still grapple with deep-seated fears and mysteries of existence. Shaw, though outwardly confident in his atheism, is portrayed as someone who cannot escape the haunting questions that life presents, illustrating the often contradictory nature of human thought and belief.
Themes
AtheismExistenceMysteryBeliefFear
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical debate about the existence of God, this quote emphasizes the internal conflicts many atheists face.
More from William Butler Yeats
All quotes βIt was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.
William Butler YeatsRead
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler YeatsRead
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
William Butler YeatsRead
For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.
William Butler YeatsRead
Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
William Butler YeatsRead
Similar quotes
The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.
Walter KaufmannRead
There is something in animals beside the power of motion. They are not machines; they feel.
Baron De MontesquieuRead
Repudiating the sensible world, which he neither sees himself nor believes from those who have, the Peripatetic joins combat by childish quibbling in a world on paper, and denies the Sun shines because he himself is blind.
Johannes KeplerRead
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.
John OwenRead
One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
Margaret AtwoodRead