Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.

The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

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.

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.