William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 10

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Age Aging Anarchy Angels Animals Art Balance

Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

William Butler Yeats

Wall, Truth, Men

1936 'An Acre of Grass', stanza 3. Collected in New Poems (1938).

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A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

William Butler Yeats

Art, Men, Meditation

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

William Butler Yeats

Struggle, Writing, World

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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And learn that the best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

William Butler Yeats

Kissing, Dancing, Pay

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.112, Wordsworth Editions

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...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

William Butler Yeats

Sweet, Stars, War

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.123, Penguin

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...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... "When You Are Old And Gray

William Butler Yeats

Love, Men, Bending Down

The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"

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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

William Butler Yeats

Twilight, Heart, Sadness

'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death'

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Song, Night, Resonance

"Byzantium" l. 1 (1933)

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Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.

William Butler Yeats

Italian, Men, Land

William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats

Heart, Night, Lakes

The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

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Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when the abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all:
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring time has not come-
Not know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.

William Butler Yeats

Death, Summer, Spring

William Butler Yeats (2012). “The Tower: A Facsimile Edition”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Wisdom, Moon

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.242, Simon and Schuster

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When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

William Butler Yeats

Wise, Book, Thinking

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III: Autobiogra”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

William Butler Yeats

Philosophy, Fighting, Philosopher

"The Letters of W.B. Yeats".

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You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?

William Butler Yeats

Song, Thinking, Lust

'The Spur'

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All the stream that's roaring by
Came out of a needle's eye.

William Butler Yeats

Eye, Roaring, Streams

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

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I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed.

William Butler Yeats

Dream, Stars, Work

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

William Butler Yeats

Heart, Substance, Enmity

The Cat and the Moon (1924) "Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The

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For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

William Butler Yeats

World, Fairy, Empty Souls

William Butler Yeats (1998). “Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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

William Butler Yeats

Life, Men, Play

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.303, Simon and Schuster

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There is only one romance the Soul's.

William Butler Yeats

Inspirational, Romance, Soul

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Happiness, Sex, Soul

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.328, Hayes Barton Press

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on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

William Butler Yeats

Nature, Men, Moon

William Butler Yeats (2011). “The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

William Butler Yeats

Goes On, Revolution, Cannons

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.267, Wordsworth Editions

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A drunkard is a dead man
And all dead men are drunk.

William Butler Yeats

Drinking, Men, Drunk

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.268, Wordsworth Editions

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

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