“Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds.”

“To Juan at the Winter Solstice There is one story and one story onlyThat will prove worth your telling,Whether as learned bard or gifted child;To it all lines or lesser gauds belongThat startle with their shiningSuch common stories as they stray into.Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,Or strange beasts that beset you,Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turnsBelow the Boreal Crown,Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?Water to water, ark again to ark,From woman back to woman:So each new victim treads unfalteringlyThe never altered circuit of his fate,Bringing twelve peers as witnessBoth to his starry rise and starry fall.Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,All fish below the thighs?She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,How many the King hold back?Royally then he barters life for love.Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,Whose coils contain the ocean,Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,Battles three days and nights,To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,The owl hoots from the elder,Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.The log groans and confesses:There is one story and one story only.Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,Do not forget what flowersThe great boar trampled down in ivy time.Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,Her sea-blue eyes were wildBut nothing promised that is not performed.”

“If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.”

“Dust in a cloud, blinding weather,Drums that rattle and roar!A mother and daughter stood togetherBeside their cottage door.'Mother, the heavens are bright like brass,The dust is shaken high,With labouring breath the soldiers pass,Their lips are cracked and dry.''Mother, I'll throw them apples down,I'll bring them pails of water.'The mother turned with an angry frownHolding back her daughter.'But mother, see, they faint with thirst,They march away to die,''Ah, sweet, had I but known at firstTheir throats are always dry.''There is no water can supply themIn western streams that flow,There is no fruit can satisfy themOn orchard trees that grow.''Once in my youth I gave, poor fool,A soldier apples and water,So may I die before you coolYour father's drouth, my daughter.”

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”

“Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama, you're not going to manhandle it into anything entirely new. It's limited by what it has been, by what's happened to it. And a people, until that time when it's uprooted and scattered and so mixed with other peoples that it has in fact perished, is much the same in this as land. It inherits.”

“The White GoddessAll saints revile her, and all sober menRuled by the God Apollo's golden mean -In scorn of which we sailed to find herIn distant regions likeliest to hold herWhom we desired above all things to know,Sister of the mirage and echo.It was a virtue not to stay,To go our headstrong and heroic waySeeking her out at the volcano's head,Among pack ice, or where the track had fadedBeyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's,Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips,With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stirWill celebrate with green the Mother,And every song-bird shout awhile for her;But we are gifted, even in NovemberRawest of seasons, with so huge a senseOf her nakedly worn magnificenceWe forget cruelty and past betrayal,Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.”