Within these breakwaters English is spoken; without / Is the immense, improbable atlas.

If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don’t raise your hands because I am also nearsighted.

But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime:’O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.

In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere....

In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them...

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

One tapped my shoulder and asked me `How did you fall, sir?’ / Whereat I awakened.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention –on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God. ....

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago / Have long been breaking others.

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.