A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.


W. H. Auden

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A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.
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If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.
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A simple fuck is one thing, but let a man sleep with you just once and he thinks he can bring his do...
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When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime
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The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.
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A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
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A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
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This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.
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Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
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Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
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It has not been decided. His family - his wife and son - are taking the decision.
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A man's home is his wife's castle.
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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
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Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
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Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
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Two things a wise man never discloses to the public; his money and his women.
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A man who has given up his fight against selfishness is already a defeated warrior of his life.
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Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. Authority is for children and servants, y...
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When that dog jumps, the crowd just goes 'a-w-w-w!'
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A man's home is his castle, and his wife is the janitor.
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A man's home is his castle, and his wife is the janitor
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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We must love one another or die.
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefe...
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to...
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I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make ...
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As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption....
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a m...
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But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the ...
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father h...
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in ...
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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A poet's hope: to be,
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the m...
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We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as...
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology ...
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into ...
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, ...
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
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To save your world you asked this man to die;
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No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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False enchantment can last a lifetime.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human,
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When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffoc...
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores
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Embrace me, belly, like a bride.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession
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O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges / To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma.
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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of ...
W. H. AUDEN
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction ...
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The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago /...
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very dif...
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don't raise your hands because I am a...
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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Look, stranger, at this island now / The leaping light for your delight discovers.
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their conscience...
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in ...
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Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good
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lay your faithless head upon my arm
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Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen
W. H. AUDEN
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain ...
W. H. AUDEN
Hunger allows no choice, To the citizens or the police; We must love one another or die
W. H. AUDEN
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN
Five minutes on even the nicest mountain / Is awfully long.
W. H. AUDEN
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the oth...
W. H. AUDEN
'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.
W. H. AUDEN
Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy
W. H. AUDEN
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scien...
W. H. AUDEN
But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely be...
W. H. AUDEN
Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''s...
W. H. AUDEN
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation
W. H. AUDEN
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me
W. H. AUDEN
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep
W. H. AUDEN
No hero is immortal till he dies
W. H. AUDEN
Let mortals beware of wordsFor with words we lieCan speak peaceWhen we mean warBut song is trueLet m...
W. H. AUDEN
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a ...
W. H. AUDEN
All that we are not stares back at what we are
W. H. AUDEN
. . . see without looking, . . . hear without listening, . . . breathe without asking.
W. H. AUDEN
Private faces in public places / Are wiser and nicer / Than public faces in private places.
W. H. AUDEN
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find it...
W. H. AUDEN
Though I believe it sinful to be queer, it has at least saved me from becoming a pillar of the estab...
W. H. AUDEN
Within these breakwaters English is spoken; without / Is the immense, improbable atlas.
W. H. AUDEN
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content/ That he held the proper opinions for the time of ye...
W. H. AUDEN
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their conscience...
W. H. AUDEN
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. AUDEN
I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Graces dances, I should dance.
W. H. AUDEN
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a jou...
W. H. AUDEN
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know
W. H. AUDEN
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. AUDEN
We would rather be ruined than changed, We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the...
W. H. AUDEN
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say
W. H. AUDEN
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of...
W. H. AUDEN
Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs ...
W. H. AUDEN
But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime:'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conq...
W. H. AUDEN
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfish...
W. H. AUDEN
Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible.
W. H. AUDEN
Poor Poe! At first so forgotten that his grave went without a tomb-stone twenty-six years. . . today...
W. H. AUDEN
Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science
W. H. AUDEN
In the nightmare of the dark - All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each seques...
W. H. AUDEN
Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. AUDEN
When it comes, will it come without warning/ Just as I'm picking my nose?/ Will it knock on my door ...
W. H. AUDEN
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
W. H. AUDEN
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willful...
W. H. AUDEN
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will...
W. H. AUDEN
Few writers have had less journalistic talent than James, and this is his defect, for the supreme ma...
W. H. AUDEN
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
W. H. AUDEN