It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.

Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.