I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated? I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?

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.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

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.