Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having.

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.

But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.

Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.