Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cucc. Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wude nu, Sing cuccu!
The book shd. be a ball of light in one’s hand.
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
A crowd pagan as ever imperial Rome was, eager, careless with an animal vigor unlike that of any European crowd that I ever looked at.
Quiet this metal! Let the manes put off their terror, let them put off their aqueous bodies with fire. Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.
Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe.
I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me For here was love, was not to be drowned out. And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
America, my country, is almost a continent and hardly yet a nation.
With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting.
No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.