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

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius.

No artist produces great art by a deliberate attempt to express his own personality.

To make an end is to make a beginning.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

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