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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

¶ "The Second Coming," l.1-8 (1920)

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

¶ (Attributed)

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?

¶ (Attributed)

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, — that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality.... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

¶ Letter to Katharine Tynan (30 Aug 1888)

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?

¶ “Easter 1916,” l. 57–59

Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.

¶ “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” l.54–55 (1938)

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