Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.

We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.

in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.

Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.