"Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before"
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Moral strength is not a gift but a capacity built in the furnace of resistance. Yielding shrinks the self; overcoming gives it surplus power. The image of a conquered temptation becoming a fund of energy suggests virtue as an economy: what is denied to impulse is not lost but banked as will, clarity, and steadiness. Trials, then, are not merely ordeals to be survived; they are instruments of shaping. Yet the line insists on the condition that they be weathered in the right spirit. Endurance alone does not ennoble. Resentment, self-pity, or vanity can calcify the heart. What strengthens is a posture of disciplined purpose, an imaginative reorientation that turns struggle toward meaning.
This moral psychology dovetails with Yeats’s lifelong preoccupation with the forging of the self. Across his career he opposed slackness with aristocratic poise and heroic effort, whether in the legendary figures of Cuchulain or in the crafted poise of the artist who chooses a demanding mask. He distrusted easy sentiment and celebrated the tension between the self and its antithesis, believing that conflict, rightly held, refines character and art. The language of energy echoes his esoteric interests: life unfolds through oppositions, and the soul gathers force as it holds its course against them.
There is also a historical resonance. Yeats wrote in an age of political turmoil and personal disillusion, when ideals were tested by violence and compromise. To speak of trials making the soul nobler asserts a standard beyond circumstance. It invites a reader to treat setbacks as material for transformation, not excuses for bitterness. The vision is severe but bracing: temptation resisted is not merely avoided harm but positive gain, the building of inner capital. Through repeated acts of refusal and faithful endurance, a person becomes fit for larger purposes, capable of a steadier gaze, and less easily thrown by the world’s gyring storms.
This moral psychology dovetails with Yeats’s lifelong preoccupation with the forging of the self. Across his career he opposed slackness with aristocratic poise and heroic effort, whether in the legendary figures of Cuchulain or in the crafted poise of the artist who chooses a demanding mask. He distrusted easy sentiment and celebrated the tension between the self and its antithesis, believing that conflict, rightly held, refines character and art. The language of energy echoes his esoteric interests: life unfolds through oppositions, and the soul gathers force as it holds its course against them.
There is also a historical resonance. Yeats wrote in an age of political turmoil and personal disillusion, when ideals were tested by violence and compromise. To speak of trials making the soul nobler asserts a standard beyond circumstance. It invites a reader to treat setbacks as material for transformation, not excuses for bitterness. The vision is severe but bracing: temptation resisted is not merely avoided harm but positive gain, the building of inner capital. Through repeated acts of refusal and faithful endurance, a person becomes fit for larger purposes, capable of a steadier gaze, and less easily thrown by the world’s gyring storms.
Quote Details
| Topic | Resilience |
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