“Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.”

Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.

There is one story and one story only.

She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.

Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I’d store up no virtue For Heaven’s distant plain, I’d live at ease as I did please And sin once again.

No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.

The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.

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.

Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can’t complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.

Since the age of 15 poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.

Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart’s desire.

Task switching exacts a cost few realize they are even paying.

Thought is powerful in all phases. Even in my career, even in my life, things end up exactly how I visualized them.

I don’t think anyone can grow unless he’s loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.

Everything is falling into pieces and those pieces are fitting into the exact places they need to.

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.

Politics is not an exact science.

What is coming may look different, but in all reality, it may be exactly what we need.

You have to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing.