Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

The line circulates as a wry, inverted observation about an Irish temperament: tragedy is portrayed as the default emotional baseline, while joy is framed as brief and interruptive. The earliest located print appearance (per the provided material) is in a 1991 newspaper interview where film director Oliver Stone uses a close variant while discussing Jim Morrison and attributes it to W. B. Yeats; later appearances repeat the Yeats attribution in books, newspapers, and speeches.

It’s a humorous exaggeration that flips the usual idea of hardship interrupting happiness. Here, a persistent awareness of suffering is depicted as what carries someone through short-lived happy moments, implying a culturally learned pessimism or fatalism.

He had an abiding sense of tragedy, occasionally interrupted by an itinerant sense of joy.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

Being Irish, he had an abidin’ sense of tragedy, which sustained him through transient periods of joy.

Being depressed, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.