William Butler Yeats Quotes

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.

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I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me

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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.

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Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked and where are they?

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A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

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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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I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away... and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

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Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

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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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I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.

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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

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I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.

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We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936

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A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

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So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.

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And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

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Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit; I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.

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