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.

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

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.

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

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 seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.