I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

The nineteenth century novels came from a time when there was no television and people had time to read novels in three volumes.

If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.

And if they haven’t got poetry in them, there’s nothing you can do that will produce it.

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.

I just didn’t want to shoot other people.

The most ancient anchors are laid to have been of stone, and sometimes of wood, to which a great quantity of lead was usually fixed.

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

Opinions are made to be changed or how is truth to be got at?

There are books up there I haven’t read for many years but I wouldn’t put them out. I never know when I might want to read them again.

A man doesn’t plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.

And in a way, that’s been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet – sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.

Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.

I never think about poetry except when I’m writing it. I mean my poetry.

How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.

Shelley is truth itself and honour itself notwithstanding his out-of-the-way notions about religion.

There are some friends you don’t meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it’s as if no twenty years has happened – you’re lucky when that happens. I feel the same about...

Everything is sweetened by risk.

And it’s impossible for me to read Henry James.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I’d throw them out.

To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

When I go fishing I like to know that there’s nobody within five miles of me.

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.

And some poets are far better read off the page because they’re very bad speakers. I’m thinking of one in particular whom I won’t name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry,...

Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You can not...

Yes! ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

When I talk of hearing a poet’s voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

Trees are your best antiques.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn’t think so.

Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can’t stand that.

Books are a finer world within the world.

And also I’m not good at inventing things. And also I’m not good at inventing things. I couldn’t invent a plot. I couldn’t invent a character.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

Anybody who writes doesn’t like to be misunderstood.

There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

Lovers may be and indeed generally are enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

A great man is the man who does something for the first time.