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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
Principles
Symbols
Transparent
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

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.
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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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
William Butler Yeats
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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
William Butler Yeats
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The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold.
William Butler Yeats
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Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
William Butler Yeats
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Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
William Butler Yeats
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What man does not understand, he fears and what he fears, he tends to destroy.
William Butler Yeats
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Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away.
William Butler Yeats
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Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.
William Butler Yeats
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The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
William Butler Yeats
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Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.
William Butler Yeats
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Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
William Butler Yeats
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If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.
William Butler Yeats
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I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
William Butler Yeats
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The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
William Butler Yeats
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somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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
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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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That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born a woman is to know- Although they do not talk of it at school - That we must labor to be beautiful.
William Butler Yeats