A Quote by William Butler Yeats

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.

William Butler Yeats

Quote Topics

Accustomed All Things Craft Driven Face Fool Hand Land Me Needs Nothing Now One Time Seeming Than Things Time Toil Verse Woman Worse

Quote Author

William Butler Yeats
Irish - Poet
June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1939

Robert Pattinson has the face of a film-noir dupe. It's a face that is searching and open and kind. It's a face that a certain type of woman might want to fool because, in its intensely old-fashioned kindness, the face says, I love you. Fool me.

Wesley Morris

a writer doesn't only need the time when he's actually writing - he or she has got to have time to think and time just to let things work out. Nothing is worse for this than society. Nothing is worse for this than the abrasive, if enjoyable, effect of other people.

Nadine Gordimer

The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.

Seneca the Younger

Oh, innocent victims of Cupid, remember this terse little verse: To let a fool kiss you is stupid. To let a kiss fool you is worse.

Yip Harburg

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Fleur Adcock

I desire to press forward for direction to my Master in all things; but as to trusting to my own obedience and righteousness, I should be worse than a fool and ten times worse than a madman.

Charles Spurgeon

You tempt me.I can't be tempted.I'm not made to be tempted,but you,Pagan Moore,you tempt me.From the moment i came for you i was drawn in.Everything about you.."One of his hands left my waist and moved up to gently caress my arm."You make me crazy with need.With want.I didn't understand it at first.But now i know.It's your soul calling to me.Souls mean nothing to me.They aren't supposed to.But yours has become my obsession.

Abbi Glines

Man's books are but man's alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie - The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil: The toil that nature ever taught, The patient toil, the constant stir, The toil of seas where shores are wrought, The toil of Christ, the carpenter; The toil of God incessantly By palm-set land or frozen sea.

Joaquin Miller

There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I’ve always been a fool.

Albert Finney

Uncle Sam is not often called a fool in business matters, yet he has sold millions of acres of timber land at two dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was worth more than a hundred dollars. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain.... a bad, black business from beginning to end.

John Muir

Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.

Willa Cather

For the devil may tempt the good, but he cannot find rest in them; for he is shaken violently, and upset, and driven out, now by their prayers, now by their tears of repentance, and now by their almsgiving and similar good works.

Bruno of Cologne

For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.

Charlotte Bronte

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.

E. M. Forster

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.