The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe but each has to believe by himself.
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.
Choice of attention to pay attention to this and ignore that is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him t...
Choice of attention ... is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences whatever they may be.
In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.
The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be impatient craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is rightly more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the cons...
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry no longer' 'I'm sorry not yet.'