''Books follow morals, and not morals books.''
''I was born to travel and write verse.''
''Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.''
''[Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire.''
''You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.''
''I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.''
''Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended perfectibility of the human race which is continually being dinned into our ears!''
''Any man which an idea, however subtle and unexpected it may be, finds lacking, is not a writer. The inexpressible does not exist.''
''The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist.''
''Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.''
''It doesn't prove anything, it doesn't tell anything.''
''Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.''