“A nation's poets are its true owners; and by the stroke of the pen they convey the title-deeds of its real possessions to strangers and aliens.”
Source: The Torch, and Other Lectures and Addresses
“Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.”
Source: Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913
“I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge.”
“Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?”
“It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.”
Source: Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913
“Shakespeare has been praised in English more than anything mortal except poetry itself. Fame exhausts thought in his eulogy.”
Source: The Torch, and Other Lectures and Addresses
“The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power.”
Source: Collected Essays: The torch and other lectures and addresses
“Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.”
“The world is a multiplicity, a harvest-field, a battle-ground; and thence arises through human contact ways of numbering, or mathematics, ways of tillage, or agriculture, ways of fighting, or military tactics and strategy, and these are incorporated in individuals as habits of life.”
Source: The Torch, and Other Lectures and Addresses
“Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.”
Source: Collected Essays: The torch and other lectures and addresses
