Quotes About Inspiration

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse.

Opinion is the enemy of the artist because it arms his uninspired moment against his inspiration.

He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone. (A Prayer For Old Age)

Yet surely there are men who have made their art Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, Impulsive men that look for happiness And sing when they have found it.

Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination.

and that he delighted in Flaubert and Pater, read Homer in the original and not as a schoolmaster reads him for the grammar.

I have to thank Messrs. Macmillan, and the editors of Belgravia, All the Year Round, and Monthly Packet, for leave to quote from Patrick Kennedy's Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, and Miss Maclintock's articles respectively; Lady Wilde, for leave to give what I would from her Ancient Legends of Ireland (Ward & Downey); and Mr. Douglas Hyde, for his three unpublished stories

To me the supreme aim (of "arranging" one's ideas and writing poetry) is an act of faith and reason to make one rejoice in the midst of tragedy.

I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its being and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

A poet […] may talk nonsense, but it will probably be interesting nonsense.