 It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom. |
| After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs. |
| The genuine artist is never "true to life." He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life. |
| The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself. |
| The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it. |
| One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be. |
| I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after. |
| A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. |
| Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them. |
| The fire burns as the novel taught it how. |
| Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise! |
| Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires. |
| Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. |
| The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. |
| Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom. |
| One's ignorance is one's chief asset. |
| To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind. |
| The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening. |
| In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all. |
| It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. |
