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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
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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
Work
Protection
Butchers
Tradition
Walt
Meet
Defiance
Grow
Seeming
Candlestick
Grows
Maker
Whitman
Chance
Merry
Baker
Needs
Writes
Butcher
Writing
Makers
Bakers
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
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
My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
William Butler Yeats
All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
William Butler Yeats
An intellectual hate is the worst.
William Butler Yeats
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep And the young lie long and dream in their bed.
William Butler Yeats
We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
William Butler Yeats
All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.
William Butler Yeats
Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
William Butler Yeats
I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
William Butler Yeats
Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
William Butler Yeats
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
Locke sank into a swoon The Garden died God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
William Butler Yeats
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.
William Butler Yeats
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes.
William Butler Yeats
It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
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
Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
William Butler Yeats
Myself I must remake.
William Butler Yeats
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
William Butler Yeats
yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, But the torn petals strew the garden plot And there's but common greenness after that.
William Butler Yeats