Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.

In the 1920s dramatists attacked their subjects as if the inequities could be resolved. Some of the traditional optimism of America lurked behind most of the early plays. But not now. There is no conviction now that the problem will be solved.

Writing is not an end in itself but life transmuted into radiance.

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.