Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

... politics are nothing but sand and gravel: it is art and life that feed us until we die. Everything else is ambition, hysteria or hatred.

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

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.

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.

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

The art of one period cannot be approached through the attitudes (emotional or intellectual) of another.