"I began to pray that my imagination might somehow be rescued from abstraction and become as preoccupied with life as had been the imagination of Chaucer. For ten or twelve years more I suffered continual remorse, and only became content when my abstractions had composed themselves into picture and dramatisation. My very remorse helped to spoil my early poetry, giving it an element of sentimentality through my refusal to permit it any share of an intellect which I considered impure. Even in practical life I only very gradually began to use generalisations, that have since become the foundation of all I have done, or shall do, in Ireland. For all I know all men may have been so timid, for I am persuaded that our intellects at twenty contain all the truths we shall ever find, but as yet we do not know truths that belong to us from opinions caught up in casual irritation or momentary fantasy. As life goes on we discover that certain thoughts sustain us in defeat, or give us victory, whether over ourselves or others, and it is these thoughts, tested by passion, that we call convictions."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Book I: Four Years: 1887-1891, ch. 21 (pp. 127-128)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_William_Butler_Yeats
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats
1896 – 1902
26 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats →
Related Quotes
"I had as many ideas as I have now, only I did not know how to choose from among them those that belonged to my life."
"When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given…"
"It is not true that youth looks before it with the mechanical gaze of a well-drilled soldier. Its quarrel is not with…"
"We begin to live when we have conceived life as tragedy."
"Only the greatest obstacle that can be contemplated without despair rouses the will to full intensity."
"We saw each other in the light of bitter comedy, and in the arts, where now one technical element reigned and then an…"
"A powerful class by terror, rhetoric, and organised sentimentality, may drive their people to war but the day draws n…"
"Politics, for a vision-seeking man, can be but half achievement, a choice of an almost easy kind of skill instead of …"
"As I look backward upon my own writing, I take pleasure alone in those verses where it seems to me I have found somet…"
"The pride and reserve, the sense of decorum and order, the instinctive playing before themselves that belongs to thos…"