I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.

This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.

Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.

The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves; Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems; Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.

Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.

The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense.

We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh...

Don't ever let anyone tell you that fairy tales aren't real. I drink a potion made from magic beans every day, and it brings me back to life.

No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.

I am a restless person.

I am a sinner....who's probably gonna sin again...Lord forgive me!

The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

I believe in Scotland's place within the United Kingdom today as much as ever.

I know you guys have some sort of weird thing going on, with that game you play and everything—" "It's called a friendship.