A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

History develops, art stands still.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

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

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.