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Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.

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
Overmuch
Touch
Nothing
Love

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
William Butler Yeats
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The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
William Butler Yeats
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The unpurged images of day recede The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.
William Butler Yeats
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One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.
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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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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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
William Butler Yeats
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Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
William Butler Yeats
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What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
William Butler Yeats
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This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.
William Butler Yeats
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Education is not about filling a pail, it's about lighting a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
William Butler Yeats
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All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
William Butler Yeats
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It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is
William Butler Yeats
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Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.
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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Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams there is no truth Saving in thine own heart.
William Butler Yeats
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It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
William Butler Yeats
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We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
William Butler Yeats
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Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .
William Butler Yeats