Things Yeats never said

Yeats is one of the most quoted poets in the world, and one of the most misquoted. These lines turn up on posters, medals and wedding cards under his name. Here is what we found about each.

  1. Not by Yeats

    "There are no strangers here; only friends you haven't yet met."

    No trace of this has been found in Yeats's poems, plays, essays or letters. Quote Investigator traces the idea to the American poet Edgar Guest, whose 1915 poem "Faith" has the line "That strangers are friends that we some day may meet." Shorter unattributed versions circulated in American newspapers from 1941, and in the 1960s the Irish Tourist Office used a version, "only friends you haven't met as yet," in its advertising, which gave the saying an Irish flavour. The earliest Yeats attribution Quote Investigator found is a Usenet post of 1997. In 2023 the line was inscribed on the Dublin Marathon medals as a Yeats quotation, and the director of the Yeats Society Sligo said there was no evidence that he wrote it.

    Where it comes from: Anonymous; developed from Edgar Guest's poem "Faith" (1915)

    Sources: Quote Investigator: There Are No Strangers Here; Only Friends You Haven't Yet Met; Irish Examiner: Dublin marathon medals inscribed with incorrect Yeats 'quote'; Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  2. Not by Yeats

    "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

    This is a modern paraphrase of Plutarch, who wrote in his essay "On Listening" that the mind does not need filling like a vessel but kindling like wood. Quote Investigator found the pail-and-fire wording in James Johnson Sweeney's Vision and Image (1968), where it is credited to Plutarch and printed straight after a genuine Yeats remark, "Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions but in getting rid of them." By 1987 the Barnes and Noble Book of Quotations had given the Plutarch line to Yeats. Yeats scholars, including Margaret Mills Harper, have searched his collected works and letters without finding it.

    Where it comes from: Plutarch, "On Listening" (Moralia), paraphrased; Yeats attribution from 1987

    Sources: Quote Investigator: The Mind Is Not a Vessel That Needs Filling, But Wood That Needs Igniting; The Irish Times: 'Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire': did WB Yeats say it?; Northwest Herald (Shaw Local): A famous Yeats 'quote' is not in his works; Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  3. Not by Yeats

    "Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."

    The idea is much older than Yeats. The earliest instance Quote Investigator found is a letter of 1782 from Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, saying it is "not only right to strike while the iron is hot, but that it may be very practicable to heat it by continually striking." The saying was later credited to Oliver Cromwell, on weak evidence, and to several other people, Yeats among them, with no supporting source. Wikiquote lists it among the unsourced lines once given under his name.

    Where it comes from: Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price (1782), for the earliest known version

    Sources: Quote Investigator: Do Not Wait To Strike Till the Iron Is Hot; But Make It Hot By Striking; Wikiquote: Talk:William Butler Yeats (Unsourced list); Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  4. Not by Yeats

    "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

    The original is by the English novelist and dramatist Eden Phillpotts, in his book A Shadow Passes: "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." He was writing about the flowers of the buckbean, whose beauty can only be seen through a lens, so the line praises scientific observation rather than second sight. Later versions changed "universe" to "world" and "wits" to "senses" and moved the line to Yeats and to Bertrand Russell; Quote Investigator found no evidence for either.

    Where it comes from: Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes (1918)

    Sources: Quote Investigator: The Universe Is Full of Magical Things Patiently Waiting for Our Wits to Grow Sharper; Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  5. Not by Yeats

    "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy."

    Researchers have searched Yeats's works for this without success. The earliest version Quote Investigator found is from 1991, more than fifty years after Yeats's death, when the film director Oliver Stone, speaking of Jim Morrison, said Yeats had written of another Irishman that "He had an abiding sense of tragedy, occasionally interrupted by an itinerant sense of joy." In 1996 the novelist Mary Higgins Clark applied the saying to Yeats himself, which may have helped fix his name to it. Its true author is unknown.

    Where it comes from: Anonymous; first credited to Yeats by Oliver Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, 1991

    Sources: Quote Investigator: Being Irish, He Had an Abiding Sense of Tragedy Which Sustained Him Through Temporary Periods of Joy; Wikiquote: Talk:William Butler Yeats (Unsourced list); Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  6. Not by Yeats

    "What can be explained is not poetry."

    These are the words of the poet's father, the painter John Butler Yeats, in a letter of September 1915 to his son. Ezra Pound included the passage in his selection Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats (Cuala Press, 1917). Carl Sandburg quoted it in 1930 with the correct credit, but the line has since drifted to the better-known son.

    Where it comes from: John Butler Yeats, letter to W. B. Yeats (1915), in Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats (1917)

    Sources: Quote Investigator: What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry; Internet Archive: Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, selected by Ezra Pound (1917)

  7. Not by Yeats

    "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

    This is another line from the letters of John Butler Yeats, not his son. He wrote it in 1909 to a Miss Grierson, and the quotation-site version is slightly tidied from his original, which begins "And happiness . . . what is it? I say it is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing or that, but simply growth." The Yeats scholar Neil Mann lists it among the popular "Yeats" quotations that belong to his father.

    Where it comes from: John Butler Yeats, letter to Miss Grierson (1909)

    Sources: Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions

  8. Not by Yeats

    "People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."

    The Yeats scholar Neil Mann identifies this as a remark by John Butler Yeats in a letter to his son of 1906, not something W. B. Yeats wrote. The father returned often to the theme in his letters; in one printed by Ezra Pound in 1917 he complains of a writer who "shackles me all the time with logic and philosophy and opinion."

    Where it comes from: John Butler Yeats, letter to W. B. Yeats (1906)

    Sources: Neil Mann, The Widening Gyre: Did Yeats Say That? Quotable Yeats and Misattributions; Internet Archive: Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, selected by Ezra Pound (1917)

  9. Not by Yeats

    "There is another world, but it is in this one."

    The line sounds like the Yeats of the fairy faith, but it is not his. It is usually credited to the French poet Paul Éluard, who printed it in Donner à voir (Gallimard, 1939) in a fuller form, "Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci," and himself gave it as a quotation from the Swiss philosopher Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, as cited by Albert Béguin in L'Âme romantique et le rêve. No source in Yeats's writings has been found.

    Where it comes from: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, quoted by Albert Béguin; printed by Paul Éluard in Donner à voir (1939)

    Sources: The Florida Review: Hidden Lives; The Autodidact Project: Paul Éluard, Physique de la poésie (from Donner à voir, 1939)

  10. Not by Yeats

    "I am the civilisation you are fighting for."

    This is a wartime anecdote that has been hung on many famous names. Quote Investigator found the earliest version in The New Age in August 1914, told of an unnamed artist and a soldier. It was later credited to George Bernard Shaw, H. W. Garrod, Lytton Strachey, Lord Dunsany and Yeats. The Yeats version surfaced in a 1953 review whose writer added that "It is difficult to believe that Yeats ever made such a remark." Quote Investigator judged the tale apocryphal, though Garrod may have said something like it.

    Where it comes from: Anonymous anecdote; earliest known version The New Age, August 1914

    Sources: Quote Investigator: I Am the Civilization You Are Fighting For

  11. Misquoted

    "Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

    Yeats did write something close to this, but he was quoting, and he said so. In his preface to The Ten Principal Upanishads (1937), translated with Shree Purohit Swami, he explains that he wanted a translation that read as if the original had been written in common English, and cites a saying he credits to Aristotle, adding that it was a favourite quotation of Lady Gregory's and that he was quoting her diary from memory. The popular version rewords it and drops both Aristotle and Lady Gregory.

    Where it comes from: A saying Yeats credited to Aristotle, via Lady Gregory

    What Yeats wrote: "'To write well,' said Aristotle, 'express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man', a favourite quotation of Lady Gregory's"

    Sources: Internet Archive: The Ten Principal Upanishads, translated by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats (1937); Wikipedia: The Ten Principal Upanishads; Wikiquote: Talk:William Butler Yeats (Unsourced list)

  12. Misquoted

    "Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

    This is a compressed and generalised version of the last sentence of Reveries over Childhood and Youth, the first volume of Yeats's memoirs. There he is not stating a rule about life. He is describing his own mood after months of recalling his childhood: "sorrowful and disturbed," not because he had achieved too little but because all his reading, the wise words he had heard and his hopes seemed to lead nowhere.

    What Yeats wrote: "all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens."

    Sources: Project Gutenberg: Reveries over Childhood and Youth

  13. Misquoted

    "In dreams begin responsibilities."

    The popular plural form is the title of Delmore Schwartz's short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," first published in Partisan Review in 1937. Yeats's own wording is singular, and it is one of two epigraphs to his collection Responsibilities (1914), where he credits it not to himself but to an "Old Play." That play has never been traced, and it is widely assumed that Yeats wrote the line himself, so it may well be his, but he chose to present it as someone else's.

    Where it comes from: Yeats credits an unidentified "Old Play"; plural form from Delmore Schwartz (1937)

    What Yeats wrote: "In dreams begins responsibility."

    Sources: Project Gutenberg: Responsibilities, and Other Poems; Wikipedia: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities; Cambridge Core: Introduction: The Responsibilities of Poetry (Poetry and Responsibility); Wikiquote: Talk:William Butler Yeats (Unsourced list)

  14. Misquoted

    "Things fall apart; the centre will not hold."

    Yeats wrote "cannot hold," not "will not hold." The line is from "The Second Coming," written in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921). The "will not hold" form has been spread by writers riffing on the poem, such as Donald Barthelme in a 1981 story, and by titles such as the 2017 documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. It changes a statement of what is impossible into a prediction.

    What Yeats wrote: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;" (The Second Coming)

    Sources: Project Gutenberg: Michael Robartes and the Dancer; Quote Investigator: The Center Will Not Hold If It Has Been Spot-Welded by an Operator Whose Deepest Concern Is His Lottery Ticket; Wikipedia: The Second Coming (poem)

  15. Misquoted

    "Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

    The thought is Yeats's, but the familiar wording is a rearrangement. The sentence opens section V of "Anima Hominis" in his prose work Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918). It goes on to contrast the rhetorician, who gets "a confident voice from remembering the crowd," with poets, who "sing amid our uncertainty."

    What Yeats wrote: "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

    Sources: Project Gutenberg: Per Amica Silentia Lunae; Wikiquote: William Butler Yeats

  16. No source found

    "Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions, but in getting rid of them."

    The remark is not in Yeats's published writings. It comes from the critic L. A. G. Strong, a friend of Yeats, who said he overheard him say it to two dons at Oxford around 1919, and who printed it in the London Magazine in 1955, sixteen years after Yeats's death. Quote Investigator notes that the long delay weakens the testimony, though the account is plausible. It was this genuine-looking line that sat beside Plutarch in the 1968 book that led to the "lighting of a fire" mix-up.

    Where it comes from: Reported by L. A. G. Strong, London Magazine, 1955

    Sources: Quote Investigator: Culture Does Not Consist in Acquiring Opinions, But in Getting Rid of Them