It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away / You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.

Style is less the man than the way a man takes himself.

Education is hanging around until you've caught on.

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.