Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

The worship of Mammon may be vulgar or immoral, but it persists while other religions falter and disappear.

The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

Reading a great book causes jolts and frights.

Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.

Telescopes and binoculars endanger the ever-distant sublime.