To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.

When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.

Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be Deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin. Thus everything that that your terms, sin, Destruction, evil represent— That is my proper element.