"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."

William Butler Yeats Literature See all quotes by William Butler Yeats →

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More by William Butler Yeats

“Do what you will. I do not understand stops. I write my work so completely for the ear that I feel helpless when I have to measure pauses by stops & commas.”

“The friends that have it I do wrongWhenever I remake a songShould know what issue is at stake,It is myself that I remake.”

“The years like great black oxen tread the world,And God the herdsman goads them on behind,And I am broken by their passing feet.”

“You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.”

“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words.”

“Alphabetical Listing of Poems by Yeats”

Resonant Thoughts

"As the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed. Yea, and more …"

— Julian of Norwich

Literature

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"We are the same. There is no difference anywhere in the world. People are people. They laugh, cry, feel, and love, and music seems to be the commons denomination that brings us all together. Music cut…"

— Willie Nelson

Music1933

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"A series of accidents creates a positively lighthearted state."

— Jean Baudrillard

Philosophy1929–2007

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"Isn't the use by America and some Western governments of their fire against others in the world including, or in the forefront of whom are the Arabs and the Muslims, one of the most important reasons …"

— Saddam Hussein

Politics1937–2006

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