“Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.”

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

To break the pentameter, that was the first heaven.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

A man’s hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.

The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Artists are the antennae of the race.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.