“The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet’s dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.”

“If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.”

“A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets make a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”

“A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.”

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much”