Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

To be faithful to your instincts and the impulses that carry you in the direction of the excellence you most desire and value ... surely that is to lead the noble life.

Thrashing is not the most noticeably awful of disappointments. Not to have attempted is the genuine disappointment.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.