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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.

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
Probably
Lying
Englishman
Idea
Englishmen
Two
Statements
Truth
Compromise
Ideas
Somewhere
People
Lies
Says

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.
William Butler Yeats
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So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
William Butler Yeats
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How can we know the dancer from the dance?
William Butler Yeats
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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...?
William Butler Yeats
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The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.
William Butler Yeats
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Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end.
William Butler Yeats
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Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.
William Butler Yeats
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All think what other people think All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?
William Butler Yeats
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The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves they must take their pleasure raw they haven't the time to cook it.
William Butler Yeats
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I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats
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How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?
William Butler Yeats
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Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
William Butler Yeats
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Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
William Butler Yeats
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We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
William Butler Yeats
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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
William Butler Yeats