"When a country produces a man of genius he is never what it wants or believes it wants; he is always unlike its idea of itself. In the eighteenth century Scotland believed itself religious, moral and gloomy, and its national poet Burns came not to speak of these things but to speak of lust and drink and drunken gaiety."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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Extract 30 (p. 352)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_William_Butler_Yeats