The more the poet grows, the deeper the level of creative intuition descends into the density of his soul. Where formerly he could be moved to song, he can do nothing now, he must dig deeper.

The great and admirable strength of America consists in this, that America is truly the American people.

Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit,it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.

Since science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion.

There is no question that the language of "felt thought" must be quarried from our personal depths. Like the best gold, it does not lie on the surface.

A man of courage flees forward in the midst of new things.

The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success.