Poetry Has Been The Longest Pleasure Of

Americans' Great And Secret Fear Is That America May Turn Out To Be A Phenomenon Rather Than A Civilization.

It Is The Impulse Of Our Century, With Its Nearly Religious Belief In Magnitude, To Fling An Institution Into Every Void.

Human Beings Need Unhappiness At Least As Much As They Need Happiness.

Sometimes, Surely, Truth Is Closer To Imagination Or To Intelligence, To Love Than To Fact? To Be Accurate Is Not To Be Right.

In The Circle Where I Was Raised, I Knew Of No One Knowledgeable In The Visual Arts, No One Who Regularly Attended Musical Performances, And Only Two Adults Other Than My Teachers Who Spoke Without Embarrassment Of Poetry And Literature — Both Of These Being Women. As Far As I Can Recall, I Never Heard A Man Refer To A Good Or A Great Book. I Knew No One Who Had Mastered, Or Even Studied, Another Language From Choice. And Our Articulate, Conscious Life Proceeded Without Acknowledgement Of The Preceding Civilisations Which Had Produced It.