I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like the state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

Women have been a ghastly nuisance in my life.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.