12 William Butler Yeats Quotes on Creativity

William Butler Yeats quotes on creativity

7. The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

9. We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

10. One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep: 'Hammer your thoughts into unity.' For days I could think of nothing else, and for years I tested all I did by that sentence.

21. Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

78. Hands, do what you're bid: Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed.

79. We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create, Timid, entangled, empty and abashed, Lacking the countenance of our friends.

102. Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.

144. Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

148. God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone.

157. Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

159. You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?

174. Talent perceives differences, Genius unity.