George Edward Woodberry — American Critic

George Edward Woodberry, Litt. D., LL. D. was an American literary critic and poet... (wikipedia)

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge.
Words are intermediary between thought and things. We express ourselves really not through words, which are only signs, but through what they signify - through things.
The world is a multiplicity, a harvest-field, a battle-ground; and thence arises through human contact ways of numbering, or mathematics, ways of tillage, or agriculture, ways of fighting, or military tactics and strategy, and these are incorporated in individuals as habits of life.
Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?