“The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”

“To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now.”

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality.”

“No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do To swell a progress start a scene or two Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool Deferential glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse At times indeed almost ridiculous— Almost at times the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us and we drown.”

“Home is where one starts from. As we grow olderThe world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicatedOf dead and living. Not the intense momentIsolated, with no before and after,But a lifetime burning in every momentAnd not the lifetime of one man onlyBut of old stones that cannot be deciphered.There is a time for the evening under starlight,A time for the evening under lamplight(The evening with the photograph album).Love is most nearly itselfWhen here and now cease to matter.Old men ought to be explorersHere or there does not matterWe must be still and still movingInto another intensityFor a further union, a deeper communionThrough the dark cold and the empty desolation,The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast watersOf the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”

“We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTill human voices wake us... and we drown.”