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And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly.

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
Would
Joy
Life
Hell
Like
Dies
Heaven
Barrow
Lying
Folded
Ends
Gloomy
Change
Frozen
Earth
Birth

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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What can I but enumerate old themes?
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On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.
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All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will
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What man does not understand, he fears and what he fears, he tends to destroy.
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Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
William Butler Yeats
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The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.
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Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul
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We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
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Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
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You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age They were not such a plague when I was young What else have I to spur me into song?
William Butler Yeats
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Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
William Butler Yeats
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Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
William Butler Yeats
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What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
William Butler Yeats
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Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
William Butler Yeats
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We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936
William Butler Yeats
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Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
William Butler Yeats
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You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon Ireland's history in their lineaments trace think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats
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A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
William Butler Yeats