Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

The human mind has claimed for water one of its highest values-the value of purity.

The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst.

Whoever lives for poetry must read everything. How often has the light of a new idea sprung for me from a simple brochure! When one allows himself to be animated by new images, he discovers iridescence in the images of old books. Poetic ages unite in a living memory. The new age awakens the old. The old age comes to live again in the new. Poetry is never as unified as when it diversifies.

Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

The word chrysalis alone is an unmistakable indication that here two dreams are joined together, dreams that be-speak both the repose and flight of being, evening's crystallization and wings that open to the light.