Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this.

I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time.

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.

We don't like flowers that do not wilt; they must die, and nine she-camel hairs aid memory.

We prove, we do not explain, our birth,

A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.

Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.

One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.

If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try.

The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.

We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.

Honesty - however dangerous - should be as valuable as radium it seems to me ...

Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.

You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.

He who gives quickly gives twice / in nothing so much as in a letter.

Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.

Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.

Poetry ... ... a place for the genuine, Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise

I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.

To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.

[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.

Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?

As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.

Among animals, one has a sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

What is our innocence, What is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

The mind is an enchanting thing is an enchanted thing, like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion.

Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

The mind is an enchanting thing.

The sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's not a Herod's oath that cannot change.

I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.

I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.

When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

All are / naked, none is safe.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.

The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it; I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.

The power of the visible is the invisible.

One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.

The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.

Excess is the common substitute for energy.

When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ...

The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.