The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself.

Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.

To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.

If you find something to tell, tell it to your truest, though that make little to tell; the truer you speak, the more you will know to tell.