Perhaps if we lived with less physical beauty we would develop our true natures more.

Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

In England, life is a long process of composing oneself.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

In the circle where I was raised, I knew of no one knowledgeable in the visual arts, no one who regularly attended musical performances, and only two adults other than my teachers who spoke without embarrassment of poetry and literature — both of these being women. As far as I can recall, I never heard a man refer to a good or a great book. I knew no one who had mastered, or even studied, another language from choice. And our articulate, conscious life proceeded without acknowledgement of the preceding civilisations which had produced it.

Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?