Kerry > Kerry's Quotes

“...and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever--”
― George Saunders, Tenth of December

“When You Are Old"


WHEN you are old and grey 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;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
― W.B. Yeats

“A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O Never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”
― W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

“Brown Penny

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.”
― William Butler Yeats

“It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

[from "The Circus Animals' Desertion"]”
― William Butler Yeats

“Surely some revelation is at hand.”
― W.B. Yeats

“How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!”
― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“What hurts the soul
My soul adores”
― W.B. Yeats

“Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old?”
― W.B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

“The Nineteenth Century And After

Though the great song return no more
There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.”
― W.B. Yeats

“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here--”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”
― F Scott Fitzgerald

“Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“My God,' he gasped, 'you're fun to kiss.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“At best, love is simply the slipping of a hand in another's, of knowing you are where you belong at last, and of exchanging through the eyes that all-consuming regard which ignores everybody else on earth.”
― Laurie Lee, I Can't Stay Long

“For the first time I was learning how much easier it was to leave than to stay behind and love.”
― Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning