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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.
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
Write
Spun
Many
Woven
Lands
Writing
Shakespeare
Even
Thread
Men
Perfectly
Land
Though
Threads
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
William Butler Yeats
Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried And fought with the invulnerable tide.
William Butler Yeats
Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
William Butler Yeats
I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.
William Butler Yeats
What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There's better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
William Butler Yeats
Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
William Butler Yeats
When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream.
William Butler Yeats
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
Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.
William Butler Yeats
Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
William Butler Yeats
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
William Butler Yeats
When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
William Butler Yeats
My wretched dragon is perplexed.
William Butler Yeats
Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.
William Butler Yeats
Boughs have their fruit and blossom At all times of the year Rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer.
William Butler Yeats
While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His Morning and his Night disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.
William Butler Yeats
Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
William Butler Yeats
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
William Butler Yeats
on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
William Butler Yeats
Nothing that we love overmuch Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats