Artistic inevitability lies in the complete adequacy of the external to the emotion.

The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire; / Before you know what is left to be desired; / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind.

There is no escape from metre; there is only mastery.

To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.

I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.