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Bodily decrepitude is wisdom young We loved each other and were ignorant.

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
Wisdom
Young
Decrepitude
Bodily
Ignorant
Youth
Loved

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied.
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What can I but enumerate old themes?
William Butler Yeats
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I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
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A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
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It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is
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O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
William Butler Yeats
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
William Butler Yeats
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You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?
William Butler Yeats
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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
William Butler Yeats
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My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.
William Butler Yeats
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Though leaves are many, the root is one.
William Butler Yeats
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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats
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I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
William Butler Yeats
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We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
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The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.
William Butler Yeats
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Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
William Butler Yeats
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Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams
William Butler Yeats
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Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
William Butler Yeats
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I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes.
William Butler Yeats
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When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.
William Butler Yeats