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I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.

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
Face
Faces
Made
World
Lashes
Looking

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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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.
William Butler Yeats
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The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats
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For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
William Butler Yeats
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And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.
William Butler Yeats
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May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
William Butler Yeats
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I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.
William Butler Yeats
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I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay
William Butler Yeats
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There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.
William Butler Yeats
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Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
William Butler Yeats
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Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead
William Butler Yeats
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I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.
William Butler Yeats
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God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.
William Butler Yeats
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I had this thought a while ago, My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land. And I grew weary of the sun
William Butler Yeats
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somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
William Butler Yeats
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I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.
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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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.
William Butler Yeats
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Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.
William Butler Yeats