If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Good art however "immoral" is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.

I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.