Looking for a quotation

Does somebody knows the source of the following quotation, it is supposed to be in Yeat's diary:
"An idle man has no thought, a mans work thinks through him. On the other hand a woman gets her thought through the influence of man. A man is to her what work is to a man. Man is a woman to his work and it begets his thoughts.
The old playwrights took old subjects, did not even arrange the subjects in a new way. They were absorbed in expression, that is to say in what is most near and delicate. The new playwrights invent their subjects and dislike anything coustomary in the arrangement of the fable, but their expression is as common as the newspapers where they first learned to write."
I would be very thankful for any help.

Stumped, Ellen. If you're not already a member, I'd suggest joining the yahoo yeats discussion group and asking them the same question.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ellen Ritter

Does somebody knows the source of the following quotation, it is supposed to be in Yeat's diary:
"An idle man has no thought, a mans work thinks through him. On the other hand a woman gets her thought through the influence of man. A man is to her what work is to a man. Man is a woman to his work and it begets his thoughts.
The old playwrights took old subjects, did not even arrange the subjects in a new way. They were absorbed in expression, that is to say in what is most near and delicate. The new playwrights invent their subjects and dislike anything coustomary in the arrangement of the fable, but their expression is as common as the newspapers where they first learned to write."
I would be very thankful for any help.

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I'm not sure but I would try doing a search on Four Years and see if you come up with anything.