The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.

music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.