Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.

Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought.

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.