William Butler Yeats Quotes

All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Memories Quotes , Soul Quotes

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?

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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.

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When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.

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There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Life Quotes

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

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The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.

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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.

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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .

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All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.

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And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

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All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Art Quotes , Perfection Quotes

It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

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But bear in mind your lover's wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there.

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Where there is nothing, there is God.

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John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

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Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.

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All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Lying Quotes , Night Quotes

Boughs have their fruit and blossom At all times of the year; Rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Running Quotes , Beer Quotes