"The stoutest timber is forged in the fiercest gales, not in the sheltered grove. Such is the immutable nature of understanding — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"It is a unyielding truth that the roots of genuine insight grow deep in the soil of quiet observation — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"True knowledge is found not in possessing answers, but in continually asking the right questions. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue."

"I have the problems of, I must confess, old age."

"A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books."

"'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know."

"I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it."

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."