I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.