“Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.”

“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.”

“You have been second always. Tragical?No. You preferred it to the usual thing:One dull man, dulling and uxorious,One average mind- with one thought less, each year.”

“The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia. And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.”

“A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.”

“My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration.”

“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.”