It is almost impossible for the poetess, once laurelled, to take off the crown for good or to reject values and taste of those who tender it.

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.

I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.

The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

... politics are nothing but sand and gravel: it is art and life that feed us until we die. Everything else is ambition, hysteria or hatred.

Perhaps this very instant is your time.

Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

...in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.

Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.

I have lost faith in universal panaceas - work is the one thing in which I really believe.

You're only as good as your last article, so make it memorable.

...the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards.

Conscience is but a word that cowards use Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Very often I suspend my musical sensibilities to enjoy music as a fan.

A flower won't open if I yell at it and say “Bloom!

Be understood in thy teaching, and instruct to this measure of capacity; precepts and rules are repulsive to a child, but happy illustration winneth him.

It's always easier to say good-bye when you know it's just a prelude to hello.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

It is remarkable how very individual technique becomes in watercolour. Every man of personality finally arrives at a method peculiarly his own, as unique as his own fingerprint.