"The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts."

"Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it."

"Literature is news that STAYS news."

"The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music."

"A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him."

"To be men not destroyers"

"And for one beautiful day there was peace."

"All other sins are open, Usura alone not understood."

"A pity that poets have used symbol and metaphor and no man learned anything from them for their speaking in figures"

"Here is the core of evil, the burning hell without let-up, The canker corrupting all things, Fafnir the worm, Syphilis of the State, of all kingdoms Wart of the common-weal, Wenn-maker, corrupter of all things Darkness the defiler Twin evil of envy, Snake of the seven heads, Hydra, entering all things Passing the doors of temples defiling the grove of Paphos, neschek, the crawling evil, slime, the corrupter of all things, Poisoner of the fount, of all fountains, neschek, The serpent, evil against Nature's increase, Against beauty"

"I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak. that is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made."

"Pride, jealousy and possessiveness 3 pains of hell"

"The temple is holy because it is not for sale."

"You damn sadist!" said mr. cummings, "you try to make people think."

"To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity. Here error is all in the not done, all in the diffidence that faltered..."

"How mean thy hates Fostered in falsity [...] Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity"

"Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place"

"The ant's a centaur in his dragon world."

"What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage"

"With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting [...] with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall [...] no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly"

"The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west, And I have tried to keep them from falling."

"Without character you will be unable to play on that instrument"

"And even I can remember A day when the historians left blanks in their writings, I mean, for things they didn't know, But that time seems to be passing."

"If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions."

"It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse."

"Not one man in a thousand can be aroused to an interest in economics until he definitely suffers from the effects of an evil system."

"The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity."

"I never was. When I left the hospital I was still in America and all America is an insane asylum."

"My worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism, all along."

"Both in Greece and in Provence the poetry attained its highest rhythmic and metrical brilliance at times when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together, when each thing done by the poet had some definite musical urge or necessity bound up within it."

"If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good."

"Our own consciousness is incapable of having produced the universe. God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence"

"But the one thing you shd. not do is suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY."

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

"Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one."

"Make it new!"

"Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello.""

"The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."

"Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists."

"It has been complained, with some justice, that I dump my note-books on the public."

"Poetry must be as well written as prose."

"One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns."

"Who brought this to pass? Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums? Barbarous kings. A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn, A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom, Three hundred and sixty thousand, And sorrow, sorrow like rain."

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough."

"Image…that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."

"It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work."

"Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite."

"But the beauty is not the madness Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me. And I am not a demigod, I cannot make it cohere."

"And of man seeking good, doing evil."

"With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one’s logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well."