“Really, though, I hate cynicism; it is a compilation of cheap aphorisms that any fool can make.”

Rejecting cynicism as shallow and unworthy of genuine thought · Letter, around 1895

• Character
• Cynicism
• Thought

“Life — our life, his life, the life of the human soul — is quite continuous, I'm convinced: one thing with another, big and little, sad and gay, real and false, and the whole business just life, which is its own punishment and reward, its own beginning and end.”

Finding continuity and meaning in the unbroken flow of existence despite loss · Letter, November 1904, after the death of Trumbull Stickney

• Continuity
• Death
• Life

“Pretty much everybody believes I'm a crank or a fool, or asks when I'm going to begin to do something; — to which question, by the way, I invariably respond — never!”

Defiantly rejecting conventional expectations of productive achievement · Letter to Marjorie Nott, September 1899

• Attitude
• Independence
• Society

“Poetry is an absolute necessity for me, but when I think of dumping a volume of verse that nobody will read on to a gorged world, I say to myself: A quoi bon?”

Acknowledging both the personal necessity of poetry and doubts about its public reception · Letter, January 1898

• Doubt
• Poetry
• Vocation

“I am almost crazed with the desire to be independent, and yet I won't do anything that I don't approve and I won't give up my writing, God willing. I must keep at it and accomplish what I can in my own way.”

Asserting the priority of artistic integrity over conventional independence · Letter to his mother, July 1899

• Independence
• Integrity
• Writing

“This winter I have been realizing a copy-book commonplace, which is at the same time a metaphysical profundity, viz.: that the present is all that is and it is not. One of the crowning metaphysical paradoxes. Of course the present is not. While you are uttering now, it is fled — it never existed.”

Reflecting on the elusive nature of the present moment · Letter, winter 1896–97

• Philosophy
• Reality
• Time

“One should learn that it is not life that should be taken seriously, but living. In that way, one gets pleasure if not happiness.”

Distinguishing the process of living from abstract notions of life itself · Letter to Sturgis Bigelow, April 1900

• Attitude
• Happiness
• Life

“One makes oneself so very largely, and to make oneself greater or better, one must believe. Apply your religion: Thy faith has made thee whole! That's the most wonderful thing Christ ever said, and it applies everywhere in life. Believe in yourself!”

Urging self-belief as the essential force for personal growth and transformation · Letter from Rome, April 1899

• Belief
• Growth
• Self Knowledge

“Oh, I am devoured by ambition. I do so want to do something that will last, — some man's work in the world, — that I am constantly depressed by an awful dread that perhaps I shan't be able to.”

Expressing the intense drive to achieve lasting work alongside the fear of falling short · Letter to his mother, near the end of college, 1895

• Ambition
• Anxiety
• Purpose