One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Birth, and copulation, and death; that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

I was too slow a mover to be a boxer. It was much easier to be a poet.

Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.

Disillusion can become itself an illusion If we rest in it.