"An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence"

"A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect"

"I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens"

"It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms"

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation"

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance"

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas"

"We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry"

"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going"

"Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate"

"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote"