In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.

We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness.

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.