William Butler Yeats? John Millington Synge? Oliver Stone? George Bernard Shaw? Mary Higgins Clark? Martha Manning? Paul Greenberg? James Finn Garner? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The painful history of the island of Ireland has produced numerous inhabitants with a melancholy disposition. This notion is reflected in the following humorously inverted saying: Being Irish, …
Category Archives: William Butler Yeats
This Wallpaper Is Killing Me; One of Us Must Go
Oscar Wilde? Claire de Pratz? Léon Guillot de Saix? Lady Gregory? William Butler Yeats? Hesketh Pearson? Philippe Jullian? Violet Wyndham? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Near the end of Oscar Wilde’s life he was debt-ridden and ill. His shabby accommodations in Paris did not meet his aesthetic standards. According to legend he said something similar to …
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The Center Will Not Hold If It Has Been Spot-Welded by an Operator Whose Deepest Concern Is His Lottery Ticket
Donald Barthelme? William Butler Yeats? Dear Quote Investigator: A poet once proclaimed with despair that the center cannot hold. The postmodern storyteller Donald Barthelme quipped that the center would not hold if it was welded together by a distracted worker. Would you please help me to find a citation. Also, I cannot recall the name …
What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry
William Butler Yeats? John Butler Yeats? Carl Sandburg? Ezra Pound? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A reader who requests clarification for a poem that is opaque is sometimes met with a rejoinder of this type: If the lines can be explained then the work is not poetry. This notion has been attributed to the Nobel Prize-winning …
There Are No Strangers Here; Only Friends You Haven’t Yet Met
William Butler Yeats? Will Rogers? Edgar Guest? Margaret Lee Runbeck? Dorothy C. Wegner? Roberta Lieberman? Mitch Albom? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The Nobel Prize winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats often receives credit for the following sentiment: There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met. Is this ascription accurate? Quote Investigator: QI …
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Do Not Wait To Strike Till the Iron Is Hot; But Make It Hot By Striking
William Butler Yeats? William B. Sprague? Benjamin Franklin? Richard Sharp? Charles Lamb? Charles Caleb Colton? Oliver Cromwell? Peleg Sprague? Ernest Hemingway? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A popular proverb highlights the limited duration of an opportunity: Strike while the iron is hot. This metaphor has been astutely extended with advice for greater challenges: Make the iron …
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Culture Does Not Consist in Acquiring Opinions, But in Getting Rid of Them
William Butler Yeats? Leonard A. G. Strong? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Too often classes in literature and the arts simply provide an encyclopedic recitation of previous opinions on a topic. The Nobel-Prize-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats made a provocative remark about the desirability of getting rid of opinions. Would you please help me to …
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I Am the Civilization You Are Fighting For
George Bernard Shaw? William Butler Yeats? Anonymous? H. W. Garrod? Lord Dunsany? Lytton Strachey? Question for Quote Investigator: While the First World War was raging an unhappy woman approached a famous British scholar and poet and rebuked him for not enlisting. She stated emphatically that young men were fighting and dying to defend civilization. Here …
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The Best Lack All Conviction While the Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity
William Butler Yeats? Bertrand Russell? Charles Bukowski? Dear Quote Investigator: Have you ever been absolutely certain about a fact and later determined that you were completely wrong? If you learn from that experience you become less arrogant and more empathetic. I wish more people would achieve this form of personal growth. Here are three versions …
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The Mind Is Not a Vessel That Needs Filling, But Wood That Needs Igniting
William Butler Yeats? Plutarch? Socrates? Plato? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a superb quotation about education that I have encountered many times. Here is a collection of examples with attributions that I have been accumulating. None of the examples came with citations: Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a …
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