It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.

All great ideas are dangerous.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"
Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--
He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb
(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)
He mewed until I heard him in the house.
I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.
What he says and what he sees are limited.
My own response is even more constricted.
I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."
What do you have except--well, me?
I joke about it but it's not a joke;
The house and I are all he remembers.
Next month how will he guess that it is winter
And not just entropy, the universe
Plunging at last into its cold decline?
I cannot think of him without a pang.
Poor rumpled thing, why don't you see
That you have no more, really, than a man?
Men aren't happy; why are you?

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

But be, as you have been, my happiness...