I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved. Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love. It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of beauty. No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you. I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates. | 
