William Butler Yeats Quotes

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.

All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision.

It sure is a nice feeling to know that people will remember you after you're gone, that you'll manage to be a little bit of history.

I don't fight for the money. I fight for my legacy. I fight for history. I fight for my people.

I don't actually think about going down in history.

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.

Age makes all things greater after their death; a name comes to the tongue easier from the grave.

To be remembered at all is an achievement of sorts.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

There stands the shadow of a glorious name.

Winning and making history is something you can't buy. Me? I'm a guy who loves history. When I'm 60 or 70, I don't want to be remembered for the money I make. I want to be in the history books.

The President of today is the postage stamp of tomorrow.

The test of greatness is the page of history.

… the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.

A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole, It does not look likely to stir a man's soul. 'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag, When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

What want these outlaws conquerors should have but History's purchased page to call them great?

Fifty years from now there will be statues of me all over Germany

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.