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Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.

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
Others
Visions
Always
Popular
Men
Welcome
World
Personal
Ready
Vision
Literature
Experience

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.
William Butler Yeats
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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
William Butler Yeats
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Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
William Butler Yeats
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Where there is nothing, there is God.
William Butler Yeats
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Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
William Butler Yeats
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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
William Butler Yeats
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
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Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.
William Butler Yeats
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What can be explained is not poetry.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
William Butler Yeats
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
William Butler Yeats
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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
William Butler Yeats
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But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
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The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats
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Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
William Butler Yeats
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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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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What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.
William Butler Yeats
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Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats