The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

One smile relieves a heart that grieves.

In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.

If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.