I always feel as if I stood naked for the fire of Almighty God to go through me--and it's rather an awful feeling. One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist.

I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself.

The Spanish wine, my God, it is foul, catpiss is champagne compared, this is the sulphurous urination of some aged horse.

It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.

[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

If only we could live two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, and the second in which to profit by them.

Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.