William Butler Yeats Quotes

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

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

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Fall Quotes , Blood Quotes

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

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

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I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.

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I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

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In dreams begins responsibility.

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

We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.

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There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

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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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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

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I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me

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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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"Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea." The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days.

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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

The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored; Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Pride Quotes

When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.

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Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Drama Quotes , Rome Quotes