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Inspirational Quotes by William Butler Yeats

48 Inspirational quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Inspirational quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

William Butler Yeats writes about a guiding herdsman, the fleeting nature of love, and the joy found in music and dance. He sees every sight as blessed and treats hope and memory as parents of art. He also reminds us that life passes quickly, like a blink of an eye.

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The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,

William Butler Yeats

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Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

William Butler Yeats

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The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

William Butler Yeats

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There is only one romance the Soul's.

William Butler Yeats

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Hammer your thoughts into unity.

William Butler Yeats

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Love comes in at the eye.

William Butler Yeats

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Who mocks at music mocks at love.

William Butler Yeats

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Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

William Butler Yeats

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Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade...

William Butler Yeats

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By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.

William Butler Yeats

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Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

William Butler Yeats

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O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

William Butler Yeats

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A thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

William Butler Yeats

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We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty...

William Butler Yeats

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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

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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Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in…

William Butler Yeats

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Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted…

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…

William Butler Yeats

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I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted…

William Butler Yeats

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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field…

William Butler Yeats

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There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.

William Butler Yeats

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I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats

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My wretched dragon is perplexed.

William Butler Yeats

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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

William Butler Yeats

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Our words must seem to be inevitable.

William Butler Yeats

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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

William Butler Yeats

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Everything we look upon is blest.

William Butler Yeats

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Words alone are certain good.

William Butler Yeats

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The falcon cannot hear the falconer

William Butler Yeats

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Everything in nature is resurrection.

William Butler Yeats

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The poet is a good citizen turned inside out.

William Butler Yeats

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And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

William Butler Yeats

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What can I but enumerate old themes?

William Butler Yeats

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When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.

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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Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

William Butler Yeats

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What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?

William Butler Yeats

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It seems to me that love, if fine, is essentially a discipline.

William Butler Yeats

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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

William Butler Yeats

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More by William Butler Yeats

Time can but make her beauty over again.

William Butler Yeats

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even…

William Butler Yeats

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no…

William Butler Yeats

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…

William Butler Yeats

That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

William Butler Yeats

I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.

William Butler Yeats

Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

William Butler Yeats

We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.

William Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I…

William Butler Yeats

Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the…

William Butler Yeats

Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving…

William Butler Yeats

His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

William Butler Yeats

We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women…

William Butler Yeats

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action,…

William Butler Yeats

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide,…

William Butler Yeats