"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?"
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Quote collection
William Butler Yeats quotes (page 20 of 30)
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We are fastened to a dying animal."
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"The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry."
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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."
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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."
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"Homer is my example and his unchristened heart."
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"Words alone are certain good."
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"We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy."
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"For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave."
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"The problem wiv some blokes is that wen they ain't drunk, they're sober."
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"Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity."
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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."
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"Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end."
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"Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song."
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"All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct."
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"I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?"
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"My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me."
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"But bear in mind your lover's wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there."
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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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"Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestical multitude."
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