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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.

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
Hands
Youth
Accustomed
Nothing
Poetry
Distraction
Needs
Land
Craft
Readier
Things
Hand
Crafts
Tempt
Time
Face
Driven
Verse
Faces
Worse
Seeming
Woman
Poet
Verses
Comes
Fool
Toil

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.
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I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
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now I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
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Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease.
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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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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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.
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Where the world ends The mind is made unchanging, for it finds Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope, The flagstone under all, the fire of fires, The roots of the world.
William Butler Yeats
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Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
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It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.
William Butler Yeats
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Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
William Butler Yeats
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I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats
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Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk
William Butler Yeats
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Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
William Butler Yeats
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I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.
William Butler Yeats
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I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
William Butler Yeats
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And many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
William Butler Yeats
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There are no strangers here Only friends you haven't yet met.
William Butler Yeats
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I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
William Butler Yeats