There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.

It has been said that a poem should not mean but be. This is not quite accurate. In a poem, as distinct from many other kinds of verbal societies, meaning and being are identical. A poem might be called a pseudo-person. Like a person, it is unique and addresses the reader personally. On the other hand, like a natural being and unlike a historical person, it cannot lie.

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.