Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey.

Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches.

Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be.

If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.

What shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.

Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.

To certain people there comes a day when they must say the great Yes or the great No.