I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a ”suspension of belief.” A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be...

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them can make me laugh.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly...

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb

It’s frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here,...

The stars are dead; the animals will not look:/ We are left alone with our day, and the time is short and / History to the defeated / May say Alas but cannot help or...

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores

Choice of attention – to pay attention to this and ignore that – is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his...

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master’s commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of...

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but...

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

It’s impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, in the position of having almost infinitely free will.

No hero is immortal till he dies

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience...

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had...

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition

All that we are not stares back at what we are

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Evil is unspectacular and always human And shares our bed and eats at our own table

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of...

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands...

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately, poetry cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are concerned with things, not...

Poor Poe! At first so forgotten that his grave went without a tomb-stone twenty-six years. . . today in danger of becoming the life study of a few professors.

Healing,” Papa would tell me, ”is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.’

. . . see without looking, . . . hear without listening, . . . breathe without asking.

Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life

Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ”shaggy dog” stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.

Let mortals beware of wordsFor with words we lieCan speak peaceWhen we mean warBut song is trueLet music for peaceBe the paradigmFor peace means changeAt the right time

lay your faithless head upon my arm

A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist,...

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say

Only those in the last stage of disease could believe that children are true judges of character.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I’d pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No...

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content/ That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;/ When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.

To ask the hard question is simple

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

Now is the age of anxiety.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one...

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good