Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

The strong man is not one who is good at wrestling, but the strong man is one who controls himself in a fit of rage.

God has given me a lifeboat and said... 'Moody save all you can

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.

In short, we lose the freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods.

The next time someone tells you, "The Church is full of a bunch of hypocrites." You can respond, "You don't even know the half of it."

I think the refugee problem is Europe is vastly worse than we have in the United States.

Our greatest battle is to become ourselves, in the face of adversity.