Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however “good” I may become, remains unchanged.
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life.
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged.
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that, as a rule, a poet should read them.
Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.