In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.

What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.

To live in the world but outside of existing conceptions of it.

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?