Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.