Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

I don’t think of myself all the time.

Her great merit is finding out mine – there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

People haven’t got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes...

All those authors there, most of whom of course I’ve never met. That’s the poetry side, that’s the prose side, that’s the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you’ve...

The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less,...

I find it’s impossible for me to read Proust.

I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of...

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.