Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

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

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.

The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people's wills.

You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.