I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice

People decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad.

It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.

What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things.