William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 19

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Wings, Dread

William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.332, Simon and Schuster

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The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.

William Butler Yeats

Father, Eye, Angel

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

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Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Children, Men

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.30, Wordsworth Editions

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I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

William Butler Yeats

Stars, Hate, Wind

William Butler Yeats (2013). “Early Poems”, p.54, Courier Corporation

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What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.

William Butler Yeats

Exercise, Wind, What If

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.162

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Where the world ends
The mind is made unchanging, for it finds
Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope,
The flagstone under all, the fire of fires,
The roots of the world.

William Butler Yeats

Fire, Roots, Miracle

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.122, Hayes Barton Press

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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.

William Butler Yeats

Inspirational, Daughter, Art

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.222, Penguin

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For what but eye and ear silence the mind
With the minute particulars of mankind?

William Butler Yeats

Eye, Silence, Mind

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.233, Hayes Barton Press

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Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart.

William Butler Yeats

Dream, Truth, Heart

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.142, Penguin

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Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

William Butler Yeats

Truth, Lying, Men

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.239, Simon and Schuster

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Time can but make her beauty over again.

William Butler Yeats

Appreciation, Her Beauty

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.62, Wordsworth Editions

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somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

William Butler Yeats

Moving, Men, Bird

William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.192, Simon and Schuster

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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

William Butler Yeats

Philosophy, Fighting, Night

William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.513, Simon and Schuster

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Dream, Mirrors, Hands

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From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories.

William Butler Yeats

Dream, Memories, Air

William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.114, Library of Alexandria

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Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Men, Giving

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.431, Simon and Schuster

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My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theater business, management of men.

William Butler Yeats

War, Drama, Men

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.75, Wordsworth Editions

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Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend.

William Butler Yeats

Brother, Struggle, Cities

William Butler Yeats (2012). “The Winding Stair and Other Poems: A Facsimile Edition”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind.

William Butler Yeats

Horse, Racing, Mind

William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.73, Library of Alexandria

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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

William Butler Yeats

Art, Men, Progress

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.364

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I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

William Butler Yeats

Children, Hands, Law

William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.138, Library of Alexandria

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

William Butler Yeats

Love, Girl, Heart

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.356, Simon and Schuster

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Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath,
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night.

William Butler Yeats

Running, Night, Men

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Wind, Mind, Burden

William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, Jared R. Curtis (2007). “The Tower (1928): Manuscript Materials”

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Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Pain, Rain

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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Born: June 13, 1865
Died: January 28, 1939
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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