Quote

For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

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
Like
Wisdom
Cloud
Upon
Clouds
Living
Property
Power
Looked
Everything
Moon
Visage
Come
Glory
Stain
Something
Dead
Incompatible
Life
Blood
Stains

More quotes by 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.
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Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.
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The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.
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Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.
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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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The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
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We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
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For how can you compete Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbour's eyes?
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The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.
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Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
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I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.
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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
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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
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Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
William Butler Yeats
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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
William Butler Yeats
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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.
William Butler Yeats
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When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
William Butler Yeats