The critic who justly admires all kinds of things simultaneously cannot love any one of them.

Reverence is a good thing, and part of its value is that the more we revere a man, the more sharply are we struck by anything in him (and there is always much) that is incongruous with his greatness.

Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.

A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It is a thing uncanny, spectral.

A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.

There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.