William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 23

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God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.

William Butler Yeats

Wings, Giving, Heaven

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.67, Simon and Schuster

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Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.

William Butler Yeats

Ideas, Needs, Stories

William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.

William Butler Yeats

Pieces, Literature, Becoming

William Butler Yeats (2017). “Ideas of Good and Evil”, p.79, Litres

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Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.

William Butler Yeats

Heart, Battle, Littles

William Butler Yeats (1908). “Ideas of good and evil”

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Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

William Butler Yeats

Hate, Fate, Men

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.115, Penguin

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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil.

William Butler Yeats

Hands, Land, Poetry

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.38, Hayes Barton Press

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

William Butler Yeats

Teacher, Father, Book

William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.53, Simon and Schuster

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Man has created death.

William Butler Yeats

Men, Biodiversity

'Death'

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O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Dream, Women

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.54, Wordsworth Editions

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I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay

William Butler Yeats

Gay, Sick, Poetry

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.250, Wordsworth Editions

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And God would bid His warfare cease,
Saying all things were well;
And softly make a rosy peace,
A peace of Heaven with Hell.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, God, Heaven

William Butler Yeats (2013). “Early Poems”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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If Michael, leader of God's host
When Heaven and Hell are met,
Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post
He would his deeds forget.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Doors, Leader

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.18

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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Dream, Children

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.28, Wordsworth Editions

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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?

William Butler Yeats

Women, Heart, Sides

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.27, Hayes Barton Press

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And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth,
And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
And in some gloomy barrow lie
Folded like a frozen fly.

William Butler Yeats

Life, Change, Lying

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.368, Simon and Schuster

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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?

William Butler Yeats

Men, House, Dancer

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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

William Butler Yeats

Alive, Lovers

William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.28, Library of Alexandria

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I would that there was nothing in the world
But my beloved that night and day had perished,
And all that is and all that is to be,
All that is not the meeting of our lips.

William Butler Yeats

Night, World, Lips

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.435, Simon and Schuster

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But stories that live longest
Are sung above the glass,
And Parnell loved his country
And Parnell loved his lass.

William Butler Yeats

Country, Glasses, Stories

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.265, Wordsworth Editions

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While on that old grey stone I sat
Under the old wind-broken tree,
I knew that One is animate,
Mankind inanimate phantasy.

William Butler Yeats

Reality, Wind, Broken

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.161, Wordsworth Editions

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I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone.

William Butler Yeats

Sex, Love Is, Doors

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.137

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

William Butler Yeats

Light, Docks, Beloved

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.59, Wordsworth Editions

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I--love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb--
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.

William Butler Yeats

Mother, Light, Body

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Men, Ephemeral, Tablets

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

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The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain,
The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord,
Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred,
Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored;
Great nations blossom above,
A slave bows down to a slave.

William Butler Yeats

Loyalty, Pride, Soldier

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.581, 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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