Life & Wisdom Quote by William Butler Yeats

Yeats turns “glory” inside out and dares you to notice the swap. Instead of the usual heroic resume - victories, titles, the solitary genius myth - he locates a man’s true radiance at the border points of life: where it “begins and ends.” That phrasing carries a graveyard hush. It suggests birth and death, yes, but also the moments when reputation is built and when it’s audited. The line is engineered like an epitaph that refuses to celebrate conquest; it celebrates association.

The clever move is the command: “Think... and say.” Yeats isn’t confessing so much as directing the reader to perform the judgment with him, as if moral clarity requires an active choice. “My glory was I had such friends” sounds simple, even humble, but it’s also a statement of curation and loyalty. “Such” implies a specific caliber: friends worthy of being counted as legacy. Yeats, who moved among artists, revolutionaries, and cultural architects of the Irish Literary Revival, knew how reputations are made in constellations, not in isolation.

Subtextually, it’s both anti-vanity and a new kind of vanity. He rejects public triumph while quietly claiming intimacy with greatness. The line works because it’s emotionally legible and politically savvy: in a time obsessed with nation, cause, and martyrdom, Yeats offers friendship as the unit of meaning - not softer than glory, but sturdier.