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Who really said it

In dreams begins responsibility

Quoted by W. B. Yeats — who credited an “Old Play” W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 · Irish poet and dramatist · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923
Attributed — documented in Yeats’s book, but he credited it to someone else Free to reuse

The line opens Responsibilities, the collection Yeats published through his sister’s Cuala Press in 1914 and then with Macmillan in 1916. It is the first of two epigraphs, and Yeats sets it in quotation marks with a credit underneath: Old Play. He gives no title, no dramatist and no date. I read the epigraph in two independent primary texts — the Cornell University copy of the Macmillan printing and Project Gutenberg’s edition — and both carry the same bare “Old Play” tag. Wikipedia calls the attribution obscure; nothing consulted here names the play. So this is a line Yeats chose, placed and made famous, and did not claim to have written.

Last verified 27 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“In dreams begins responsibility” the first epigraph of W. B. Yeats’s Responsibilities (Cuala Press, 1914; Macmillan, 1916), where Yeats prints it in quotation marks and credits it to "Old Play", naming no play, author or date. None has since been identified, so the line is documented but its authorship is not. The familiar plural, "In dreams begin responsibilities", is Delmore Schwartz’s 1937 story title. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

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In context

Evoking the world of W. B. Yeats — Irish poet, dramatist and senator · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923. Theme: "In dreams begins responsibility". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "In dreams begins responsibility". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
Responsibilities — first epigraph, facing the opening poem
First published
1914, Cuala Press — 400 copies, printed by Yeats’s sister Elizabeth Corbet Yeats
Edition read here
Responsibilities, and Other Poems (Macmillan) — the copy consulted states “Printed 1916, Reprinted 1917”
Credited by Yeats to
“Old Play” — no title, author or date given

‘In dreams begins responsibility.’
— Old Play.

‘How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.’
— Khoung-fou-tseu.

The two epigraphs as they stand at the front of the book, transcribed from Project Gutenberg’s text ↗ and checked against the Cornell University scan of the Macmillan printing ↗. The second is Confucius, on no longer dreaming of the Prince of Chang. Read together they are a pair about dreaming: one says dreams commit you, the other mourns their loss.

Scanned first pages
Responsibilities, and Other Poems — Cornell copy, full text
Project Gutenberg — Responsibilities, and Other Poems, full text

How we verified this

  • The epigraph itself. Project Gutenberg’s text of Responsibilities, and Other Poems prints it in italics and quotation marks, with “Old Play.” set beneath and to the right — see the text ↗. The same two epigraphs, in the same order, appear in the Cornell University scan ↗, whose copyright page reads “Printed 1916. Reprinted 1917.”
  • The book. Responsibilities was first printed in 1914 by the Cuala Press, run by Yeats’s sister Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, in an edition of 400 copies; Macmillan issued the trade edition in 1916. Wikipedia describes the “old play” epigraph as obscure and pairs it with the Confucius one as announcements of a new, more political direction — Wikipedia on the collection ↗.
  • No play has been named. Yeats supplies no dramatist, title or date, and neither Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗ nor Wikipedia’s article on the book ↗ nor its article on the Delmore Schwartz story ↗ identifies one. Quotle.info therefore does not credit the line to Yeats outright, and does not credit it to anyone else either.
  • Where the plural version comes from. The form most people meet is “In dreams begin responsibilities” — the title Delmore Schwartz gave his 1937 short story, taken from this epigraph. Yeats’s line is singular on both counts: dreams begins responsibility — Wikiquote notes the adaptation ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse. Responsibilities was first published in 1914 and the Macmillan printing consulted here dates from 1916, both comfortably before the 1931 cut-off for the United States public domain; Project Gutenberg distributes the full text on that basis. Yeats himself presented the line as a quotation from an older play, which if true would put its own origin earlier still.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The two things people get wrong

This line is not misattributed so much as over-attributed. Two errors travel with it.

W. B. Yeats, as author

Yeats printed the sentence in quotation marks and credited “Old Play”. Quoting a line is not writing it, and a poet who wanted the credit would not have added the tag. What can be said with certainty is that he chose it, put it first, and gave the book its title from it — the epigraph as printed ↗.

“In dreams begin responsibilities” wording drift

The plural version is Delmore Schwartz’s, the title of his 1937 short story, which took the phrase from this epigraph. Yeats wrote the singular: begins responsibility — Wikipedia on the story ↗.

The defensible statement: the line stands at the front of Yeats’s Responsibilities (1914), in quotation marks, credited by Yeats to an old play nobody has since named — read the page yourself ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Yeats was nearly fifty and changing. The early work had been Celtic twilight — fairies, legends, a dreamt Ireland. Responsibilities is where the dreaming acquires a bill: the book contains “September 1913”, with its verdict that “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone”, and poems about money, patronage and public quarrels. The epigraph is the hinge, and it is aimed at himself.

That is why the missing play matters less than it looks. Whoever first wrote the sentence, Yeats put it where a reader cannot avoid it, and then spent the collection proving it: if you spend your youth imagining a country, you are on the hook for what it becomes.

Yeats did not claim the line. He just made it impossible to read the book without it.

Read the full story

The Cuala Press edition of 1914 ran to 400 copies, hand-printed by Yeats’s sister Elizabeth. The Macmillan trade edition of 1916 is how most readers met the book, and it is the printing digitised by both Cornell and Project Gutenberg — which is why the epigraph can be checked today in two independent texts rather than taken on trust from a quotation site.

The line had a second life in American letters. Delmore Schwartz borrowed it, pluralised, for the 1937 story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” — a narrator watching his parents’ courtship as a film and shouting at the screen. The plural stuck, and it is now the more commonly quoted form of a sentence Yeats printed in the singular.

Attaching a motto to an unnamed old source was a familiar habit in the century before Yeats. Wikipedia notes that most of Walter Scott’s novels open each chapter with an epigram or “motto”, and that many of these “are of his own composition, often imitating other writers” — see the article ↗. That is context for how such tags were used, not evidence about this one: no play matching Yeats’s credit has been identified either way.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Purpose Character Creativity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Responsibilities, and Other Poems — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s public-domain text. The epigraph and its “Old Play” credit are on the page facing the first poem.
Responsibilities, and Other Poems — scannedarchive.org

The Cornell University copy of the Macmillan printing (“Printed 1916, Reprinted 1917”), used here as the independent check on the wording.
William Butler Yeats — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Attributes the line to the epigraph of Responsibilities (1914) and notes Delmore Schwartz’s adaptation of it.
Responsibilities and Other Poemsen.wikipedia.org

Publication history: Cuala Press 1914 in 400 copies, Macmillan trade edition 1916, and both epigraphs.
In Dreams Begin Responsibilitiesen.wikipedia.org

Delmore Schwartz’s 1937 story, whose title is the pluralised version of Yeats’s line and the reason most people misremember it.
W. B. Yeatsen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the poet, 1865–1939, Nobel laureate in Literature in 1923.

The author

About W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

1865–1939 · Irish poet, dramatist and senator · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923

William Butler Yeats began as the presiding poet of the Celtic Revival and ended as one of the hardest, plainest writers of the twentieth century — a rare career in which the late work is the best. He co-founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, served in the first Senate of the Irish Free State, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. Responsibilities (1914) is the pivot: the volume in which the dreamer starts sending himself the bill.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this page

W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities, and Other Poems (London: Macmillan, printed 1916, reprinted 1917), epigraph — credited there to “Old Play”. Read in the Cornell University Library copy, Internet Archive ↗, and independently in Project Gutenberg’s text ↗. The collection was first published by the Cuala Press in 1914 in an edition of 400 copies, per Wikipedia ↗. No play matching Yeats’s “Old Play” credit is identified by any source cited here.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘In dreams begins responsibility’?” Last verified 27 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/in-dreams-begins-responsibility/

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