William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
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If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.
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. . . you may think I waste my breath Pretending that there can be passion That has more life in it than death
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But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.
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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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Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
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Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.
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What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.
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Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.
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There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.
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By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.
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Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.
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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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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
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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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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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If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.
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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... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.
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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
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... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
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Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.
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I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest; And right between these two a girl at play That, it may be, had danced her life away.