When you talk about changing the rules, that takes time, and it always involves more than just a committee.

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

It is the lot of man but once to die.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge,just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.

Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.

Getting to the top isn’t bad, and it’s probably best done as an afterthought.

Some have too much, yet still do crave; I little have, and seek no more. They are but poor, though much they have, And I am rich with little store.

Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.

You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they’re not imposed, somehow, on the language.

Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.

Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.

I have crushed the cup of youth like a rose between my fingers but its nectar never warmed my weary heart.

The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

It seems unpleasantly refined To put things off till someone knows.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

He that hath no cross deserves no crown.

I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.

What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Your average pop song or film is a very sophisticated item, with very sophisticated ways of listening and viewing that we have not really consciously developed over the years – because we were having such...

There are so many ways to heal. Arrogance may have a place in technology, but not in healing. I need to get out of my own way if I am to heal.

My mind to me a kingdom is, such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss.

There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.

Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.

And bitter waxed the fray; Brother with brother spake no word When they met in the way.

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.

I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.

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

The average person’s ear weighs what you are, not what you were.

Out there in the spotlight you’re a million miles away and every ounce of energy you try to give away as the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.

The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond – had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

Looking after my health today gives me a better hope for tomorrow.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true.

Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.