William Butler Yeats Quotes

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

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

I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

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The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

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The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.

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I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

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Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.

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As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.

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The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

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The problem wiv some blokes is that wen they ain't drunk, they're sober.

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The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Heart Quotes , Folly Quotes

The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?"

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I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Dream Quotes

I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?

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Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

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He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.

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Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.

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A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.

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And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place.

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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Swag Quotes