"Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
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Quote collection
William Butler Yeats quotes (page 9 of 30)
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack."
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"I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart."
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"The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth."
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"The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness."
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"Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought."
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"Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?"
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"Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss."
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"I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept."
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"You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements."
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"Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . ."
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"All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one."
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"Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply."
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"I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless."
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"A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
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"I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away."
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"I had this thought a while ago, "My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land." And I grew weary of the sun"
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"All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will"
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"All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone."
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"What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?"
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