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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.

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
Keep
Leisured
Certain
Leisure
Book
Jewish
Without
Ancient
Country
Says
Important
Opinion
Wisdom
Class

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born a woman is to know- Although they do not talk of it at school - That we must labor to be beautiful.
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What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
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Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
William Butler Yeats
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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats
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The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.
William Butler Yeats
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Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns? I have been changed to a hound with one red ear I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns.
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A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
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The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats
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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
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The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
William Butler Yeats
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All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.
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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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
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O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
William Butler Yeats
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A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew And half is half and yet is all the scene And half and half consume what they renew.
William Butler Yeats
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Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.
William Butler Yeats
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In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
William Butler Yeats
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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
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I say that Roger Casement Did what he had to do, He died upon the gallows But that is nothing new.
William Butler Yeats
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rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.
William Butler Yeats