Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it.

Today, you're halfway to 100! Here's to optimism, whether it is realistic or not. Happy 50th birthday!

This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

We must learn to suffer more.

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.