Soft As The Earth Is Mankind And

Death Is The Sound Of Distant Thunder At A Picnic.

A Vice In Common Can Be The Ground Of A Friendship But Not A Virtue In Common. X And Y May Be Friends Because They Are Both Drunkards Or Womanizers But, If They Are Both Sober And Chaste, They Are Friends For Some Other Reason.

The Chances Are That, In The Course Of His Lifetime, The Major Poet Will Write More Bad Poems Than The Minor, Simply Because Major Poets Write A Lot.

Who On Earth Invented The Silly Convention That It Is Boring Or Impolite To Talk Shop? Nothing Is More Interesting To Listen To, Especially If The Shop Is Not One's Own.

At First Critics Classified Authors As Ancients, That Is To Say, Greek And Latin Authors, And Moderns, That Is To Say, Every Post-classical Author. Then They Classified Them By Eras, The Augustans, The Victorians, Etc., And Now They Classify Them By Decades, The Writers Of The '30's, '40's, Etc. Very Soon, It Seems, They Will Be Labeling Authors, Like Automobiles, By The Year.