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.

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

Our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and of our visible, sensible world.

Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.