“Art is a revelation, and not a criticism.”

Defining art as disclosure of imaginative reality rather than commentary upon society · Essay, The Body of the Father Christian Rosencrux

• Art
• Criticism
• Imagination

“In the making and in the understanding of a work of art, and the more easily if it is full of patterns and symbols and music, we are lured to the threshold of sleep.”

Describing art as drawing consciousness towards a dreamlike receptive state · Essay, The Symbolism of Poetry

• Art
• Dreams
• Imagination

“All writers, all artists of any kind, in so far as they have had any philosophical or critical power, have had some philosophy, some criticism of their art.”

Arguing that serious artistic creation is accompanied by reflection on its principles · Essay, The Symbolism of Poetry

• Art
• Criticism
• Writing

“Beauty is an accusation.”

A compressed statement of beauty's unsettling power to challenge ordinary life · Essay, The Symbolism of Poetry

• Art
• Beauty
• Truth

“Art is not less the art of the people because it does not always speak in the language they are used to.”

Rejecting the idea that accessible art must always employ familiar language or conventions · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Language
• Society

“In this matter he must be without humility.”

Insisting that artistic vision sometimes requires uncompromising confidence · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Courage
• Individuality

“He must picture saint or hero, or hillside, as he sees them, not as he is expected to see them.”

Defending the artist's individual perception against social expectation · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Individuality
• Sincerity

“He must make his work a part of his own journey towards beauty and truth.”

Presenting artistic creation as a personal search for beauty and truth · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Beauty
• Truth

“Once he has chosen a subject he must think of nothing but giving it such an expression as will please himself.”

Arguing that the artist's first responsibility is fidelity to personal vision · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Independence
• Sincerity

“No writer, no artist, even though he choose Brian Boroihme or S. Patrick for his subject, should try to make his work popular.”

Defending artistic integrity against deliberate attempts to please a mass audience · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

• Art
• Independence
• Writing

“The imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not.”

Expressing Yeats's conviction that imagination can reach truths inaccessible to reason · Essay, The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry

• Imagination
• Mind
• Truth

“I thought that whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent.”

Suggesting that poetry gives philosophical thought its most enduring form · Essay, The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry

• Eternity
• Poetry
• Truth

“Our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.”

Contrasting modern urban consciousness with an older receptiveness to mystery · Essay, Magic

• Civilization
• Education
• Mind

“I often think I would put this belief in magic from me if I could.”

Revealing the burden as well as the fascination of Yeats's occult convictions · Essay, Magic

• Belief
• Mystery
• Struggle

“I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are.”

A direct statement of Yeats's lifelong engagement with occult and mystical practice · Essay, Magic

• Belief
• Experience
• Mystery

“All art is, indeed, a monotony in external things for the sake of an interior variety, a sacrifice of gross effects to subtle effects, an asceticism of the imagination.”

Describing artistic discipline as restraint that allows subtler imaginative effects to emerge · Essay, Speaking to the Psaltery

• Art
• Imagination
• Skill

“Ordinary speech is formless, and its variety is like the variety which separates bad prose from the regulated speech of Milton.”

Arguing that artistic speech requires deliberate form rather than mere natural variation · Essay, Speaking to the Psaltery

• Art
• Language
• Style

“They cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea of a cult with ancient technicalities and mysteries.”

Connecting traditional art with inherited ritual, technique and mystery · Essay, What Is ‘Popular Poetry’?

• Art
• Mystery
• Tradition

“I have never been quite certain that one should be more than an artist, that even patriotism is more than an impure desire in an artist.”

Questioning whether artistic purpose should be subordinated even to patriotic duty · Essay, What Is ‘Popular Poetry’?

• Art
• Independence
• Politics

“What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?”

Reflecting Yeats's concern with recovering poetry's ancient connection with voice, rhythm and song · Conversation with Vachel Lindsay, Chicago

• Music
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Literature decays when it no longer makes more beautiful, or more vivid, the language which unites it to all life.”

Defining literature's vitality through its power to renew the language of shared experience · Essay collection, The Cutting of an Agate

• Language
• Life
• Literature

“The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”

Stating directly how central mysticism was to Yeats's life and creative work · Letter to John O'Leary, 1892

• Belief
• Mystery
• Writing

“Talk to me of originality and I will turn on you with rage. I am a crowd, I am a lonely man, I am nothing. Ancient salt is best packing.”

Rejecting simplistic notions of originality in favour of tradition and a many-sided artistic self · Essay, A General Introduction for My Work

• Identity
• Originality
• Tradition

“All that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt.”

Arguing that personal experience must be transformed by artistic form if it is to endure · Essay, A General Introduction for My Work

• Art
• Time
• Writing