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A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.

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
Imagination
Fancy
Flame
Representations
Possible
Familiar
Revelation
Allegory
Spiritual
Invisible
Symbol
Embodied
Many
Principle
Representation
Symbolism
Thing
Indeed
Revelations
Lamp
Essence
Belongs
Lamps
Expression
Flames
Amusement
Principles
Symbols
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More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
William Butler Yeats
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I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.
William Butler Yeats
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The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
William Butler Yeats
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Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest.
William Butler Yeats
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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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What can I but enumerate old themes?
William Butler Yeats
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.
William Butler Yeats
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From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
William Butler Yeats
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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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All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.
William Butler Yeats
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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
William Butler Yeats
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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves that lamp is from the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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I had this thought a while ago, My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land. And I grew weary of the sun
William Butler Yeats
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Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.
William Butler Yeats
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While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.
William Butler Yeats