"No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest—for it is a part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude."

"The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down."

"Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility."

"Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy... A country within which the divisions have gone too far is a danger to itself: a country which is too well united - whether by nature or by device, by honest purpose or by fraud and oppression - is a menace to others."

"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.…Poetry…remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic."

"The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings."

"It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it."

"When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way."

"The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards."

"If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph."

"I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me."

"It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

"I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is and its one Idea is to be Useful!!"

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

"It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

"My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion."

"... were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death."

"There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet."

"‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’"

"A dangerous person to disagree with."

"Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness."