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What can be explained is not poetry.

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
Explained
Poetry
Life

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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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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Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
William Butler Yeats
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I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats
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Come near I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
William Butler Yeats
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler Yeats
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And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
William Butler Yeats
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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.
William Butler Yeats
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My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
William Butler Yeats
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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
William Butler Yeats
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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
William Butler Yeats
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
William Butler Yeats
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Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.
William Butler Yeats
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What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
William Butler Yeats
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I have nothing but the embittered sun Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.
William Butler Yeats
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When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
William Butler Yeats
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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
William Butler Yeats
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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats