“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.”

“The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes connot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog. Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

“I do wish Slumtrimpet could do something about undermining that young woman's sense of the ridiculous.”

“Attempts to connect men's circumstances too closely with their literary productions are usually, I believe, unsuccessful.”

“the Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is.”

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”

“But the detail of the poem shows power akin to genius, and reveals to us that much neglected law of literary history -- that potential genius can never become actual unless it finds or makes the Form which it requires.”