We can influence who we will be tomorrow, for tomorrow can only be built on today.

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

The sufficiency of merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.

Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer.

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

We have finally started to notice that there is real curative value in local herbs and remedies. In fact, we are also becoming aware that there are little or no side effects to most natural...

Presidential money is almost like the housing bubble. It’s growing at such an astronomical rate, you think it can’t get any bigger.

It’s hard to detect good luck – it looks so much like something you’ve earned.

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man’s spiritual vision.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Judge of a jest when you have done laughing.

I suppose for whatever reason I actively welcome being put down, something which perhaps goes back to my upbringing – that accusation of not being worthy which could be laid at one’s door.

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.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.

A man of personality can formulate ideals, but only a man of character can achieve them.

The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

Security is an attempt to try to make the universe static so that we feel safe.

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.

Heaven finds an ear when sinners find a tongue.

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

When sparrows build and the leaves break forth My old sorrow wakes and cries.

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

Healthy people live with their world.

Voters definitely believe Washington is corrupt – but most think it’s bipartisan.

A habit is something you can do without thinking – which is why most of us have so many of them.

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

Now is the age of anxiety.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

I think it’s too simple to say that violence equals energy; people have said that along the way. Violence is debilitating as much as anything else.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

Has fortune dealt you some bad cards. Then let wisdom make you a good gamester.

And again I answer that it is only in the degree that the slave is emancipated and the personality differentiated that we can speak of progress.

The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.

George W. Bush is a leader, and that’s what we need in the White House. George Bush is someone you can believe and trust.

No hero is immortal till he dies.

That’s one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one’s little turn – that you’re just part of the great crop, as it were.

Trusting our intuition often saves us from disaster.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise.

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

Man is the miracle in nature. God Is the One Miracle to man.

He ne’er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.

You owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at.

Differences challenge assumptions.