"I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human progress is an illusion, that man is not an animal that can be perfected, but an animal that can be improved."

"Of course, that he is a poetical phenomenon, as entirely without fault, as is the luxurious paper upon which his poems are invariably borne to the public eye."

"Why is his last new novel sleep itself? Because it's so poor. — sopor."

"A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere -- and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves."

"I have... for the metaphysical poets [William Wordsworth, etc.], as poets, the most sovereign contempt. That they have followers proves nothing."