But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

Bad poets imitate, good poets steal.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

Human kind cannot bear much reality.