“If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.”

“When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.”

“They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.”

“...when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination" --above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have it.”

“Nevertheless"you've seen a strawberrythat's had a struggle; yetwas, where the fragments met,a hedgehog or a star-fish for the multitudeof seeds. What better foodthan apple seeds - the fruitwithin the fruit - locked inlike counter-curved twinhazelnuts? Frost that killsthe little rubber-plant -leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can'tharm the roots; they still growin frozen ground. Once wherethere was a prickley-pear -leaf clinging to a barbed wire,a root shot down to growin earth two feet below;as carrots from mandrakesor a ram's-horn root some-times. Victory won't cometo me unless I goto it; a grape tendrilties a knot in knots tillknotted thirty times - sothe bound twig that's under-gone and over-gone, can't stir.The weak overcomes itsmenace, the strong over-comes itself. What is therelike fortitude! What sapwent through that little threadto make the cherry red!”

“I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it”

“You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability ratherthanan asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates formwe are justified in supposingthat you must have brains. For you, a symbol of theunit, stiff and sharp,conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority andliking for everythingself-dependent, anything anambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, toattempt through sheerreserve, to confuse presumptions resulting fromobservation, is idle. You cannot make usthink you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you arebrilliant, itis not because your petals are the without-which-nothingof pre-eminence. Would you not, minusthorns, be a what-is-this, a mereperculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, theelements, or mildew;but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliancewithout co-ordination? Guarding theinfinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience tothe remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-membered too violently,your thorns are the best part of you.”