Sea Quotes by William Butler Yeats

13 Sea quotes by William Butler Yeats

All Sea quotes William Butler Yeats’s page

Yeats never needed many lines to convey the ocean’s symbolism. This modest set of thirteen quotes offers a focused taste of his lyrical mysticism, where waves become portals for his poetic imagination.

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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.

William Butler Yeats

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Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the…

William Butler Yeats

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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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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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"Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea." The Druids took them to their mystery,…

William Butler Yeats

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I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no…

William Butler Yeats

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I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the…

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…

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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A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the…

William Butler Yeats

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THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew…

William Butler Yeats

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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their…

William Butler Yeats

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...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves…

William Butler Yeats

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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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