The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time.

I am god...to the dislexic segment of the population.

Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

For years I exercised to be thinner, and I never got the results I wanted. Now I determine my weight by how my clothes feel.

Agendas tend to drain the life out of relationships.

Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation.

American Dream Is Under Assault. People that haven't been able to find a job in months and this growing sense in this country that this is the new normal, well we can't accept that.

Positive thinking isn't ignoring life's problems, it's understanding that Allah can make a way out for you if you sincerely try.

Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's great federalist and apologist, has coined a wonderful term, la raza cósmica, "the cosmic race," a new people having not one race but many in their blood.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Politicians are actors, too, don't you think? Usually, if you like people and you're outgoing, not a shy little thing, you can do pretty well in politics.