William Butler Yeats Quotes

There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.

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Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

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Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

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My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.

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I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.

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Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

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My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.

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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

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In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class.

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Man has created death.

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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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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.

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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

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The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

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O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

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Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

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For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

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Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.

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Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

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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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