The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.

Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.

Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.