For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author's thoughts. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has though…

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on…

At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of so…

Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his death, whether we feel it or not, wh…

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly.