From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.

An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another.

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.