They [the English] have a special word, "civil," for what is elsewhere merely ordinary politeness.
Edmund WilsonThe only thing that we can really make is our work, and deliberate work of the mind, imagination and hand, done, as Nietzsche said, โnotwithstanding,โ in the long run remakes the world.
Edmund WilsonAt 60 the sexual preoccupation, when it hits you, seems sometimes sharper, as if it were an elderly malady, like gout.
Edmund WilsonA young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies.
Edmund Wilson