One smile relieves a heart that grieves.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

[W]hen people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are unreserved with strangers

Are you hero enough to unite yourself to one whom you know to be suspected and despised by all around you, and identify your interests and your honor with hers?

The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. [...] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book.

Without inner peace it is impossible to have world peace.

When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam's lobotomy.

I'm useless scrabbling around at home. I get on everyone's nerves, including my own. I'm not very good at amusing myself.

Like the mind-set that places men above women, whites above blacks, and rich above poor, the mentality that places humans above nature is a dysfunctional delusion.

No matter what the situation may be, there is always something positive you can do about it.

Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem, for purely religious purposes, of course, to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.

I don't have a type. I don't have a specific kind of human being. It's just kind of an X-factor of sorts. Everybody I've ever dated has been a case-by-case situation.