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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats -
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
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It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is
William Butler Yeats -
When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.
William Butler Yeats -
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more.
William Butler Yeats -
When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things.
William Butler Yeats -
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
William Butler Yeats -
All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
William Butler Yeats
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When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 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; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yeats -
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
William Butler Yeats -
What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?
William Butler Yeats -
Love comes in at the eye.
William Butler Yeats -
Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against God's Providence.
William Butler Yeats -
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
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I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats -
But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
William Butler Yeats -
I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.
William Butler Yeats -
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.
William Butler Yeats -
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
William Butler Yeats -
I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent
William Butler Yeats
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Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk
William Butler Yeats -
Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
William Butler Yeats -
And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.
William Butler Yeats -
For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?
William Butler Yeats