How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
|
First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
|
No good poem, however confessional is may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?
|
We hear much of a decent pride, a becoming proud, a noble pride, a laudable pride. Can that be decent, of which we ought to be ashamed? Can that be becoming, of which God has set forth the deformity? Can that be noble which God resists and is determined to abase? Can that be laudable, which God call abominable.
|
Examples is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.
|
A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness.
|
Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.
|