No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead. – Van Wyck Brooks
Books that have become classics — books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal — always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. – William Hazlitt
I dont believe in an afterlife, so I dont have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. – Isaac Asimov
