"When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance..." - Quote by William Butler Yeats

“Laughter not time destroyed my voiceAnd put that crack in it,And when the moon's pot-belliedI get a laughing fit.”

“Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.”

“Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.”

“The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails - aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter's reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.”

“I do not want my house to be rounded by walls and my windows to be closed to other cultures. I wish to become familiar with the culture of lands as much as possible but I will not permit them to affect me or shake me from my own status.”

“The marriage vow is an absurdity imposed by society.”

“One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.”

“A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack on morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.”

“Whatever it is, I'm against it.”