Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.

The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation, neither are they transmitted by book learning. The mystic tradition, any mystic tradition, is of a similar nature, that is, it is dependent on direct perception, a 'knowledge' as permanent as the faculty for receiving it.

A little light, like a rushlight / to lead back to splendour.

It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.

Either move or be moved.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.