The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

There is one story and one story only.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.

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.

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate