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but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.

William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
Mystic
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Grows
Begins
Hands
Fruit
Dream
Older
Care
Flower
Take
Loss
Great
Dreams
Lightness
Something
Perhaps
Retirement
Life
Loses
Aging

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion.
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When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
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Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
William Butler Yeats
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True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
William Butler Yeats
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I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.
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It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
William Butler Yeats
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And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
William Butler Yeats
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Education is not filling
William Butler Yeats
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.
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The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away.
William Butler Yeats
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THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.
William Butler Yeats
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I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.
William Butler Yeats
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I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
William Butler Yeats
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I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no moreSoon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
William Butler Yeats
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What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.
William Butler Yeats
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O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
William Butler Yeats
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A line will take us hours maybe Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
William Butler Yeats
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Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst much falling he Brooded upon sanctity.
William Butler Yeats
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Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
William Butler Yeats
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The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.
William Butler Yeats