Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Sensory experiences like taste and sight define our truth before death. The speaker celebrates wine and love before accepting mortality.
In plain terms
We know truth through senses like taste and sight until we die, so enjoy wine and love now.
What can you take from it?
Embrace sensory pleasures while you can.

Where it applies

  • personal reflection
  • artistic expression

Putting it to work

  • savor the moment
  • appreciate beauty

Questions to consider

  • What gives your life meaning?
  • Can senses reveal truth?

Another view

It reduces truth to only sensory input.

More from William Butler Yeats

  1. The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our…

    Permalink to quote #51
  2. Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

    Permalink to quote #53
  3. Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little stree…

    Permalink to quote #50

Related quotes

  1. Never again to wiggle your toes. What a hell of a thing, what a wonderful, beautiful thing, to wiggle your toes.

    Dalton TrumboDalton Trumbo quote #1
  2. Devouring Famine, Plague, and War, Each able to undo mankind, Death's servile emissaries are; Nor to these alone confined, He hath at will More quaint and subt…

    James ShirleyJames Shirley quote #1
  3. A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet, A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet, A bridal bed and a bier. Thine be the kisses, maid, And smiling Love's alarms; A…

    Thomas Lovell BeddoesThomas Lovell Beddoes quote #1