William Butler Yeats Quotes

Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.

4 years ago

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Morning Quotes , Children Quotes

The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack.

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for never yet Has lover lived, but longed to wive Like them that are no more alive.

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If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

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An Irish Airman foresees his Death I Know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Country Quotes , Lonely 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

Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.

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Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

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The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.

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Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.

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To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.

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All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.

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The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.

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Tags : William Butler Yeats Quotes , Song Quotes , Night Quotes

You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

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God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.

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O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.

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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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It seems to me that true love is a discipline.

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All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

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Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made.

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