I like Rhine wine, blue grapes, good cheese, endive and lots of books, etc., etc., etc., as much as I like supreme fiction.

He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds, then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still the sky was blue.

I placed a jar in Tennessee and round it was upon a hill.

Poetry is a finikin thing of air That lives uncertainly and not for long Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

They said"You have a blue guitar You do not play things as they are". The man replied,"things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar".

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts it becomes an epidemic. p901

The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

Man is an eternal sophomore.

The lion sleeps in the sun. its nose on its paws. it can kill a man.

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things

From oriole to crow, note the decline In music. Crow is realist. But, then, Oriole, also, may be realist.

It is not in the premise that reality Is a solid. It may be a shade that traverses A dust, a force that traverses a shade.

After the final no there come a yes, and on that yes a future world depends.

Then the sea and heaven rolled as one and from the two came fresh transfigurings of freshest blue.

Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon ...

The stars are putting on their glittering belts, They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash Like a great shadow's last embellishment

Sentimentality is a failure of feeling. p.903

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.

Fromage and coffee and cognac and no gods.

Reality is the beginning not the end, Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega, Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

The wound kills that does not bleed.

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.