The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.
I want to write poems which are very emotional, but I would have some hesitation in saying I want to write poems which are sentimental.
If people connect me with the Romantics in general, they probably connect me most with Keats. But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.
To love love and not its meaning, hardens the heart in monstrous ways..." (The Rape Of The Swan) Footnote : A form of self-edification, infatuation, lust and the epitome of hedonism.
What is more important to a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists." [ , American Scholar; Washington, DC, June 5, 1972]
If it's painful for you to criticize your friends, you're safe in doing it; if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.
You're dancing on me said the cosmic dragon, the galactic surface of all we can see. So fucking what? she said.
Wind ought to be a verb or an adverb. It isn't really anything. It's a manner of movement of warmth and cold: a kind of information system of the air.
I try not to invent; I try simply to translate the weird language of the natural world. And I'm not into absolute ownership of things.
We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.
The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul.
Britain has enormous amount of talent, as we've seen from the BAFTAs. It's all here, and it has to be allowed to flourish.
I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
