Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality.