If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.

Art is contemplation of the world in a state of grace and imaginatively reflecting that subjective understanding.

All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God.

I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.

And what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be.

To recognize causes is to think, and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and begin to mature.