A true sonnet goes eight lines and then takes a turn for better or worse and goes six or eight lines more.

Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspectthey differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. . . . Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart

Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.