A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.