He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence.

I will dream today; for I must unscrew my head somehow.

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Anecdote: A house that is rooted to one spot but can travel as quickly as you change your mind and is complete in itself is surely the most desirable of houses. Our modern house with its cumbersome walls and its foundations planted deep in the ground is nothing better than a prison and more and more prison like does it become the longer we live there, and wear fetters of a association and sentiment.

The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.

Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.