Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent.

A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that they are verses worth writing.
All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is not addressed to any individual, and of course does not refer to any reader of these pages.

I would always treat any given young person passing through the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief period of adolescence with great tenderness.

God forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an undeceived self-estimate.

I have always tried to be gentle with the most hopeless cases.