A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.

Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction.