"Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away."
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Quote collection
William Butler Yeats quotes (page 5 of 30)
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect."
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"Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk"
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"One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again."
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"I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made."
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"only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art."
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"When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream."
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"I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes."
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"Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live."
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"The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away"
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"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings."
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"No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love."
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"If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise."
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"What can be explained is not poetry."
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"The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write."
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"Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."
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"I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit."
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"Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb."
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"All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake."
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"I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know."
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