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William Butler Yeats Quotes

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William Butler Yeats Quotes & Sayings

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
- William Butler Yeats

The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.
- William Butler Yeats

This country will not always be an uncomfortable place for a country gentleman to live in, and it is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure."
- William Butler Yeats

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
- William Butler Yeats

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
- William Butler Yeats

And I am broken by their passing feet.
- William Butler Yeats

And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
- William Butler Yeats

The years like great black oxen tread the world,
- William Butler Yeats

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric, of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
- William Butler Yeats

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
- William Butler Yeats

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