A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detach.