Quote

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.

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
Imagination
Absurdity
Impossible
Tied
Fantastical
Age
Passionate
Decrepit
Eye
Expected
Caricature
Heart
Excited
Caricatures
Never
Ears
Troubled
Dog
Tail
Shall
Tails

More quotes by 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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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
William Butler Yeats
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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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The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.
William Butler Yeats
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One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.
William Butler Yeats
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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
William Butler Yeats
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But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
William Butler Yeats
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For how can you compete Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbour's eyes?
William Butler Yeats
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I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.
William Butler Yeats
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I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no moreSoon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
William Butler Yeats
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O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.
William Butler Yeats
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When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
William Butler Yeats
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Things fall apart the center cannot hold.
William Butler Yeats
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Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Breed out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
William Butler Yeats
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From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories.
William Butler Yeats
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Between extremities Man runs his course A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.
William Butler Yeats
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Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
William Butler Yeats
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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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Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
William Butler Yeats
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
William Butler Yeats