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William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes

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Famous William Butler Yeats Quotes

“I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.”

KnowsWayStillsReasonDreamBodyCertainImaginationVisionSilentCommandmentsLightingBinding
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
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“Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.”

MenBodyTruthLyingViolenceBloodHolyMen And WomenLipsHeavyOilVampireWetLoadBloodyVioletClayMiraculousShroudsHoly ManHeavy Loads
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition
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“I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.”

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Book:The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
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“As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.”

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Book:The Yeats companion
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“Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

KnowsSoulWisdomBodyBornPleasureTreeDespairLaborDancingOilDancerRootedLeafsGlancesMidnightBruisedBlossomingChestnuts
Author:William Butler Yeats
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