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.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

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

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

A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.

There is one story and one story only.

I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.