"Politics, for a vision-seeking man, can be but half achievement, a choice of an almost easy kind of skill instead of that kind which is, of all those not impossible, the most difficult. Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell?"
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_William_Butler_Yeats