An entertainment is something which distracts us or diverts us from the routine of daily life. It makes us for the time being forget our cares and worries; it interrupts our conscious thoughts and habits, rests our nerves and minds, though it may incidentally exhaust our bodies. Art, on the other hand, though it may divert us from the normal routine of our existence, causes us in some way or other to become conscious of that existence.

These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

The great modern heresy in poetry is to confuse the use we make of words in a poem with modalities of speech...For true poetry is never speech but always a song.

What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.

I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.

A man of personality can formulate ideals, but only a man of character can achieve them.