By nominating Chuck Hagel to be his Defense secretary President Obama is putting forward an aloof contrarian who doesn't suffer fools - a striving politician who considers himself above politics.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry all that he has learned about poetry is only a partial assurance.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser rather peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.

For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the vanquished it means resigning himself to the position left to him.

If you remember you just have one constituent and that's God himself and if you try to please him I think you usually come with a lot steadier pace and a lot more peace in your life.

That a man be willing when others are so too as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary to lay down this right to all things and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things man will not himself find peace.

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.