"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry"
About this Quote
Yeats nails a cruel asymmetry: when we fight other people, we perform; when we fight ourselves, we confess. “Rhetoric” is the public art of winning, a craft designed for an audience and sharpened by the desire to be right. It’s persuasive, strategic, a little theatrical. You’re not just arguing; you’re curating a version of events in which you come out coherent and justified. The quarrel becomes material for speeches, letters, manifestos, the whole ego-protecting apparatus of language.
But the “quarrel with ourselves” can’t be staged the same way. There’s no opponent to caricature, no clean victory. Internal conflict is messy: desire contradicts principle, memory edits itself, shame keeps score. That’s where “poetry” enters, because poetry isn’t primarily about persuading someone else; it’s about surviving what you know. It tolerates ambiguity, contradiction, the ache of being divided. It turns the private grind of conscience into form - not to “win” the argument, but to hold it.
The context matters: Yeats lived through political upheaval in Ireland and spent a lifetime orbiting movements, lovers, and mystic systems, often sounding like a public prophet and a private doubter in the same breath. His line is a quiet rebuke to polemics, including his own. It suggests that our loudest certainty often signals an external target, while our truest language comes from the inward fight we’d rather not admit we’re losing.
But the “quarrel with ourselves” can’t be staged the same way. There’s no opponent to caricature, no clean victory. Internal conflict is messy: desire contradicts principle, memory edits itself, shame keeps score. That’s where “poetry” enters, because poetry isn’t primarily about persuading someone else; it’s about surviving what you know. It tolerates ambiguity, contradiction, the ache of being divided. It turns the private grind of conscience into form - not to “win” the argument, but to hold it.
The context matters: Yeats lived through political upheaval in Ireland and spent a lifetime orbiting movements, lovers, and mystic systems, often sounding like a public prophet and a private doubter in the same breath. His line is a quiet rebuke to polemics, including his own. It suggests that our loudest certainty often signals an external target, while our truest language comes from the inward fight we’d rather not admit we’re losing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by William
Add to List
