It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

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

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.

Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.