There is probably nothing wrong with art for arts sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago. – Allen Tate
Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values. – Allen Tate
So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman. – Allen Tate
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – Isaac Newton (1642–1727), spoken the evening before his death