Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
Choice of attention, to pay attention to this and ignore that, is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
Choice of attention ... 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.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
Any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate.
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.
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall; And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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.
Man is a tempted being, living with what he does and suffers in time, the medium in which he realizes his potential character. The indeterminacy of time means that events never happen once and for all. The good may fall, the bad may repent, and suffering can be, not a simple retribution, but a triumph.
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
