A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
Choice of attention – to pay attention to this and ignore that – is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
History marches to the drum of a clear idea.
With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse.
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover’s kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one’s neck.
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
Time will say nothing but I told you so...
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.