"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

"The function of posterity is to look after itself."

"Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction."

"I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay."

"When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes."

"These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't."

"He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest."

"Do not go gentle into that good night."

"My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out."

"Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction."

"But time has set its maggot on their track."

"Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity."

"Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party."

"Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name."

"There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright."

"The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it."

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

"Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great."