“You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?”

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.

Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.

Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

When I’m killed, don’t think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there’s one thing that I know well, I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.

Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.

So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You’ll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you’ve read.