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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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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
Essence
Guard
Ponder
Holy
Colour
Colours
Divine
Complexes
Pondering
Purpose
Complex
Medieval
Art
Daily
Patients
Bade
Form
Patient
Secrecy
Talismans
Part
Forms
Magician
Magicians
Made
Mere
Symbolic
Portraiture

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher, Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
William Butler Yeats
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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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I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.
William Butler Yeats
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
William Butler Yeats
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Only the dead can be forgiven But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
William Butler Yeats
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Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
William Butler Yeats
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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
William Butler Yeats
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
William Butler Yeats
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Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted, Their heads being turned with praise and flattery And that is why their lovers are afraid To tell them a plain story.
William Butler Yeats
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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love
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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An intellectual hate is the worst.
William Butler Yeats
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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
William Butler Yeats
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An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.
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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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
William Butler Yeats
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Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
William Butler Yeats
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Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
William Butler Yeats