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The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.

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
Time
Innocence
Enemy
Beauty

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. Hound voices were they all.
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Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
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I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.
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Between extremities Man runs his course A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.
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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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Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
William Butler Yeats
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And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats
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Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
William Butler Yeats
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One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.
William Butler Yeats
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I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember
William Butler Yeats
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Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
William Butler Yeats
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I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.
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.
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And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
William Butler Yeats
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I know of the leafy paths that the witches take Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake.
William Butler Yeats
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I have nothing more to give you than my heart. Spanish saying Hearts are not to be had as a gift hearts are to be earned.
William Butler Yeats
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When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
William Butler Yeats
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Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
William Butler Yeats
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I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats
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But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats