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I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
William Butler Yeats
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William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
Mystic
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Make
Show
Good
Shows
Men
Best
Find
Lantern
Enough
Lanterns
Even
Swings
Every
Believed
Believe
Higher
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.
William Butler Yeats
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.
William Butler Yeats
We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936
William Butler Yeats
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams
William Butler Yeats
The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.
William Butler Yeats
Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
William Butler Yeats
Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
William Butler Yeats
The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
William Butler Yeats
O would, beloved, that you lay Under the dock-leaves in the ground, While lights were paling one by one.
William Butler Yeats
Choose your companions from the best Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
William Butler Yeats
While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His Morning and his Night disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.
William Butler Yeats
I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
William Butler Yeats
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
William Butler Yeats
Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
William Butler Yeats
Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.
William Butler Yeats
A line will take us hours maybe Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
William Butler Yeats
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
William Butler Yeats
When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.
William Butler Yeats
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
William Butler Yeats
