William Butler Yeats Quotes

Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Wind Quotes , Collaboration Quotes

My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Sex Quotes

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.

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And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

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A lonely impulse of delight

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I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?

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His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

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All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it

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How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?

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Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Book Quotes , Reading Quotes

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.

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Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

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Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.

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Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.

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A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into the Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.

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