Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turned to beautiful results.
My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.
I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself.
Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.