Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.

How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?

Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

Anything is beautiful if you say it is.

It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.