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.

The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing.

But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of contemplation.

Fantasy is a product of thought, Imagination of sensibility. If the thinking, discursive mind turns to speculation, the result isFantasy; if, however, the sensitive, intuitive mind turns to speculation, the result is Imagination. Fantasy may be visionary, but it is cold and logical. Imagination is sensuous and instinctive. Both have form, but the form of Fantasy is analogous to Exposition, that of Imagination to Narrative.

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.