1,059 Quotes by William Butler Yeats

  • Author William Butler Yeats
  • Quote

    Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought – asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

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  • Author William Butler Yeats
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    Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which...

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  • Author William Butler Yeats
  • Quote

    Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

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  • Author William Butler Yeats
  • Quote

    The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.

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  • Author William Butler Yeats
  • Quote

    Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit; I study hatred with great diligence, For that’s a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.

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