Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?