And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.
Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories.
In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.
It takes so many years to learn that one is dead.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.
Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.
Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self.
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.
Someone said, ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Light Light The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding.
Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.