Land Quotes by William Butler Yeats

11 Land quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Land quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

Yeats’s reflections on the earth weave myth and memory into a compact set of eleven lines. You’ll find his lyrical take on roots, borders, and the soul of a nation, all in a concise, approachable collection.

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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.

William Butler Yeats

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What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but…

William Butler Yeats

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The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody…

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…

William Butler Yeats

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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in…

William Butler Yeats

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Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

William Butler Yeats

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My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out,…

William Butler Yeats

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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs…

William Butler Yeats

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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss…

William Butler Yeats

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A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and…

William Butler Yeats

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Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may…

William Butler Yeats

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More by William Butler Yeats

Time can but make her beauty over again.

William Butler Yeats

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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

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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

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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…

William Butler Yeats

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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

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

William Butler Yeats

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

William Butler Yeats

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

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…

William Butler Yeats

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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

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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

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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

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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…

William Butler Yeats

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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

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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

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