Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.

A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.

There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?