We see not our own backs.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.

It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.

But you shall not escape my iambics.

Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns. [Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

Godlike the man who sits at her side, who watches and catches that laughter which (softly) tears me to tatters: nothing is left of me, each time I see her.

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.

Better a sparrow, living or dead, than no birdsong at all.

The schizophrenic has no sense of humor. His world is a constantly daunting, unfriendly place.

Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.

Analogy pervades all our thinking, our everyday speech and our trivial conclusions as well as artistic ways of expression and the highest scientific achievements.

Lean liberty is better than fat slavery

Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish. ... Time pours into us and then pours out again. In between the two pourings we live our destiny.

The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.

We have learned to express the more delicate nuances of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the mysteries of harmony.

I've always loved to sing.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, timid policies, offer today a path to safety.