Faith & Spirit Quote by William Butler Yeats

Yeats turns moral struggle into a kind of spiritual finance: temptation conquered becomes “a new fund,” suffering becomes capital, and the self accrues interest through endurance. It’s bracing, almost managerial language for a poet so often associated with mist, myth, and occult longing. The word choice matters. “Conquering” frames temptation not as a private wobble but as a battle; “trial endured and weathered” borrows from storms and shipwrecks, implying that character is forged less in grand revelations than in surviving rough weather without losing your direction.

The intent is quietly prescriptive. Yeats isn’t offering comfort so much as a code: pain and desire are not interruptions to the moral life; they are the raw material. The subtext is anti-indulgent and anti-victimhood at once. Temptation is expected, even useful, but only if you convert it into discipline. Trial is inevitable, but it’s the “right spirit” that determines whether it enlarges you or corrodes you. That phrase smuggles in a hard standard: it’s not enough to suffer; you must suffer well.

Context sharpens the edge. Yeats lived through Ireland’s turbulent nationalism, cultural revival, and political violence, alongside a deeply personal history of frustrated love and restless spiritual seeking. In that world, “moral energy” isn’t abstract virtue-signaling; it’s the stamina required to keep making art, commitments, and identity under pressure. The line argues for a self built like a muscle: tested, strained, and strengthened, not by purity, but by resisted appetite and survived upheaval.