He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other; each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.