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About this quote

What does it mean?
Beauty demands hard work, but the poet accepts it to join great thinkers.
In plain terms
Serving beauty is hard but worth it for good company.
What can you take from it?
Accept hardship for what you love.

Where it applies

  • artistic life
  • study
  • travel

Putting it to work

  • seek true peers
  • endure struggles

Questions to consider

  • What hard work do you accept?
  • Who are your intellectual friends?

Another view

Some avoid beauty to live easier lives.

More from William Butler Yeats

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  3. I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved Or boyish intel…

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