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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

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
Attention
Girl
Heart
Love
Spanish
Roman
Russian
Standing
Politics

More quotes by 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 creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
William Butler Yeats
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It seems to me that true love is a discipline.
William Butler Yeats
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It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
William Butler Yeats
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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
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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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
William Butler Yeats
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Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.
William Butler Yeats
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For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
William Butler Yeats
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Ah, let us kiss each other's eyes,/And laugh our love away.
William Butler Yeats
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One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.
William Butler Yeats
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People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
William Butler Yeats
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On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest And right between these two a girl at play That, it may be, had danced her life away.
William Butler Yeats
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I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough' wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.
William Butler Yeats
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May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
William Butler Yeats
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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
William Butler Yeats
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Though leaves are many, the root is one.
William Butler Yeats
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I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.
William Butler Yeats
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I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.
William Butler Yeats
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Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
William Butler Yeats