What is this self inside us, this silent observer, Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us And urge us on to futile activity, And in the end, judge us still more severely For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

One starts an action Simply because one must do something.

The Rum Turn Tugger is a terrible bore: When you let him in, then he wants to be out; He's always on the wrong side of every door, And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about.

No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other; each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.

Those who talk of the Bible as a "monument of English prose" are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

In the life of one man, never The same time returns.