William Butler Yeats Quotes

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Doe Quotes , Lines Quotes

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Death Quotes , Summer Quotes

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

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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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Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Doe Quotes , Ethics Quotes

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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The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.

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Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.

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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.

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Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery; And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.

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Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

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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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Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.

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And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

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I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.

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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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We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.

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If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.

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I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.

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Not a man alive has so much luck that he can play with it.

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