“I never see anyone. I am not like other men. People ought to think of these things.”

Asserting the poet's radical difference from ordinary society · Conversation

• Individuality
• Poets
• Solitude

“Irony is the enigma within the enigma, the open secret, the only answer, the last word of philosophy, the nearest approach to truth; Irony affirms and delights in the whole.”

Defining irony as the integrating force of truth and philosophy · Essay / Letters to the Editor

• Irony
• Philosophy
• Truth

“A poet is always a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate vanity. In his heart he says, I want my poetry to be remembered when Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are forgotten.”

On the grand and self-regarding ambitions of the true poet · A Rosary

• Ambition
• Poetry
• Poets

“Men are the universe become conscious; the simplest man should consider himself too great to be called after any name.”

Expression of materialist and individualist vision · Later philosophical writings

• Humanity
• Identity
• Universe