But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.

In all the good Greek of Plato I lack my roastbeef and potato. A better man was Aristotle, Pulling steady on the bottle.

He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.

Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.

For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.

Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

What will you do today so tomorrow becomes the legacy you wanted to leave?

Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does.

Some people tell us that there ain't no Hell But they never farmed so how can they tell?

The one important thing you do as boss is you set the standard. The minute you go in and say 'we'll let it go this time,' you set a new standard, which is lower. So you cannot do that.

And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?

I could go on to speak of sanity as compared with insanity, decency as compared with vandalism, friendship as compared with rabies.

The world is now unipolar and contains o-nly o-ne superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower.

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.