William Butler Yeats Quotes

'Biutiful' is not about death. It's about life. It's a hymn to life.

Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.

Gather kittens while you may, Time brings only sorrow; And the kittens of today; Will be old cats tomorrow.

Today is my grandfather's birthday." "How old is he?" "Sixty-three. It's hard to believe he was once a human being.

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.

That state of mind - of being beside yourself - is wonderful. As you get older, you're just very aware of a sense of an ending. You're grateful for every day.

At my age I'm envious of a stiff wind.

If you're lucky enough to get old, I think you should celebrate it.

For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?

When you're old, everything you do is sort of a miracle.

... there is a skeleton (or death) that flees terrified in the face of my will to live.

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

I glared at him. "I may not die now... but I'm going to die sometime. Every minute of the day, I get closer. And I'm going to get old.

I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man's average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time , while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.

If sexuality means saying yes to life, then you should be able to remain sexual until the day you die.

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.