Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

Seagulls . . . slim yachts of the element.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.

Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us.

civilization is a transient sickness.