I have lost faith in universal panaceas - work is the one thing in which I really believe.

Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.

What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.

Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.

I don't like quintessential certitude.

A thousand kindnesses do not make up for a thousand blows.