The inmost in due time becomes the outmost.

The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.