Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the
seventeenth, poetry.

Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the
seventeenth, poetry.

Books are humanity in print.

Books are humanity in print.

Beauty is but a flower,Which wrinkles will devour;Brightness falls from the air;Queens have died young and fair;Dust hath closed Helen's read more

Beauty is but a flower,Which wrinkles will devour;Brightness falls from the air;Queens have died young and fair;Dust hath closed Helen's eye.I am sick, I must die;Lord have mercy on us. - Song in Time of Pestilence.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive read more

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.

Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations read more

Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no read more

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary read more

One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.

Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, read more

Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.