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

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

Hate does not present many choices; if hate is your solution, you are fairly certain to hate all phemonena with equal joy and intensity, without troubling to drag into prominence any one feature from the loathsome whole.

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

All art, in spite of the struggles of some critics to prove otherwise, is based on emotion and projects emotion.

I don't like quintessential certitude.

It is through the acceptance of a variety of aethetic and intellectual points of view that a culture is given breadth and density.