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"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down."

"My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours.""

"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

""Men work together," I told him from the heart,"Whether they work together or apart.""

"There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground."

"I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed…"

"Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise."

"The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why."

"Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist."

"My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane."

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover…"

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source, it dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds, it dies of weariness, of withe…"

"From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . …"

"If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching."

"I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann. (...) That, like it or not, is the wa…"

"For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect."

"Between the finite and the infinite The missing link of Love has left a void. Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join In one continued chain of endless life."

"No question is ever settled Until it is settled right."

"I find a rapture linked with each despair, Well worth the price of anguish. I detect More good than evil in humanity. Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, And men grow better as the world gr…"

"I'm no reformer; for I see more light Than darkness in the world; mine eyes are quick To catch the first dim radiance of the dawn, And slow to note the cloud that threatens storm."

"You never can tell when you do an act Just what the result will be; But with every deed you are sowing a seed, Though the harvest you may not see. Each kindly act is an acorn dropped In God's producti…"

"So many gods, so many creeds; So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs."

"Here, on this side of the grave, Here, should we labor and love."

"There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain."

"Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them …"

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on …"

"It is impossible to pursue a successful literary career and follow the advice of all one's 'best friends'. I feel compelled to follow the light which my own intellect & judgement cast upon my way, rat…"

"Oh you who read some song I have sung What know you of the soul from whence it sprung"

"Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive…"

"Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the…"

"I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. “Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!”"

"How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality."

"O morning stars, together  Proclaim the holy birth!And praises sing to God the King,  And peace to men on earth."

"O little town of Bethlehem,How still we see thee lie!Above thy deep and dreamless sleepThe silent stars go by;Yet in thy dark streets shinethThe everlasting Light;The hopes and fears of all the yearsA…"

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

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

"Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello.""

"The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."

"Winter is icumen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slop,And how the wind doth ramm!   Sing: Goddamm."

"Who brought this to pass?Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?Barbarous kings.A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,A turmo…"

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough."

"Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic ra…"

"Für die Romantiker und für die spekulative Philosophie bedeutete der Terminus kritisch: objektiv produktiv, schöpferisch aus Besonnenheit. Kritisch sein hieß die Erhebung des Denkens über alle Bindung…"

"Everyone who achieves strives for totality, and the value of his achievement lies in that totality—that is, in the fact that the whole, undivided nature of a human being should be expressed in h…"

"The true sign of decadence is not the collusion of the university and the state (something that is by no means incompatible with honest barbarity), but the theory and guarantee of academic freedom, wh…"

"Der Beruf folgt so wenig aus der Wissenschaft, dass sie ihn sogar ausschließen kann. Denn die Wissenschaft duldet ihrem Wesen nach keine Lösung von sich."

"An das Leben der Studenten tritt die Frage nach seiner bewußten Einheit heran. ... Das Auszeichnende im Studentenleben ist in der Tat der Gegenwille, sich einem Prinzip zu unterwerfen, mit der Idee si…"

"… für den wahren Sammler ist die Erwerbung eines alten Buches dessen Wiedergeburt. … Die alte Welt erneuern – das ist der tiefste Trieb im Wunsch des Sammlers, Neues zu erwerben, und darum steht der S…"

"Zur Verknechtung der Sprache im Geschwätz tritt die Verknechtung der Dinge in der Narretei fast als deren unausbleibliche Folge."

"Jede Äußerung menschlichen Geisteslebens kann als eine Art der Sprache aufgefaßt werden, und diese Auffassung erschließt nach Art einer wahrhaften Methode überall neue Fragestellungen."

"Il me semble que la tache politique actuelle dans une société comme la notre c’est de critiquer le jeu des institutions apparemment les plus neutres et les plus indépendantes, de les critiquer et les …"

"Je crois que le pouvoir politique s’exerce encore, s’exerce en outre, de plus, par l’intermédiaire d’un certain nombre d’institutions qui ont l’air comme ça de n’avoir rien de commun avec le pouvoir p…"

"What all these people are doing is not aggressive; they are inventing new possibilities of pleasure with strange parts of their body — through the eroticization of the body. I think it's ... a creativ…"

"There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas…"

"One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. (When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inv…"

"Qui définit le moment où j'écris?"

"Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremel…"

"Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else."

"[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is clos…"

"We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one anot…"