FastSaying

A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.


W. H. Auden

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In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me...
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 I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a litt...
J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN talab si lagi h
jo phansa h saansoen me
jisne jakda h phanso me
usse chhootne ki, tut...
VANDANA YADAV Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of He...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU There are poets who sing you to sleep
and poets who ready you for war
and I want to be bot...
ASHE VERNON And I myself a Catholic will be,
So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail, Bard tri...
ABRAHAM COWLEY Are you?" I said. "Gay, I mean?"

-

I hoped he wasn't offended by my asking, b...
BRENT HARTINGER He utilizes
form for a striking lecture;
young poets shiver

inexperience,
...
KRISTEN HENDERSON E V E R Y T H I N G I S E N E R G Y ' 
~ ALBERT EINSTEIN



' I F E V E R Y T H I N...
SERGE BENHAYON The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone.
H e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d ...
TAHEREH MAFI Orion nodded, then asked, “Dwarf cheese?”
“Cheese made by dwarfs.”
“Oh,” said ...
EOIN COLFER You've got to S-M-I-L-E
To be H-A-Double-P-Y
SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK Some like them hot,some like them cold.
Some like them when they're not to darn old
Some l...
RING LARDNER Ah, Mastery of the Five Elements!"
"Is that the one we want?" I asked.
"No, but a good one...
RICK RIORDAN MUSINGS

The little poets sing of little things:
Hope, cheer, and f...
ROBERT E. HOWARD W- Work of Art
A- Achiever
R- Resilient
R- Radical
I- Independent
O- Organi...
SHANNON L. ALDER W:"At least I'm not pussy-whipped!"

T:"Nice. Fucking. Suit."

--Wrath to Tohr
J.R. WARD Your neck smells like cheese,' I said.
'Oh,' He said, 'that's my cheese cologne. I have a whole...
KRISTIN WALKER – Ale... Ja nie wierzę w Boga.
– A kto tu mówi o Bogu? (...) Wyrażam tylko opinię Nieba...
JAKUB ĆWIEK Should have taken warning it's just
People mourning
Running, hiding, lost
You can't f...
CY CURNIN THE FIXX I said to my soul
Be still
And wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing...
TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT poets. have
the toughest job
in the universe-

of turning silence
into elo...
SANOBER KHAN Tacos."
"Tacos?" I echoed.
This seemed to amuse him. "Tomatoes, lettuce, cheese."
"I ...
BECCA FITZPATRICK Hope is sweet.
Hope is illumining.
Hope is fulfilling.
Hope can be everlasting.
...
SRI CHINMOY ...‘All this suffering,’ I said, ‘and nothing but greed and violence to build on when the war ...
JOYCE DENNYS I see murky visions of other gods and rival magic."
That REALLY didn't sound good.
"What d...
RICK RIORDAN Little Alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hOle,
bumped her head
and br...
LEWIS CARROLL There is no peace to be taken
With poets who are young,
For they worry about the wars to be fo...
JOYCE KILMER we are all like poems.
some of us rhyme. some don’t.
some are Pulitzer prizes
som...
SANOBER KHAN Some would say it is madness to want a woman this way,
but I think it must be love. Not the tep...
BETTIE SHARPE Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
'Ride,' Pleasure said;
'Walk,' Joy replied.
W.H. DAVIES - A pan czy wierzy w duchy - spytał prelegenta jeden ze słuchaczy.
- Oczywiście, że nie - o...
ARKADY STRUGATSKY if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven or...
E. E. (EDWARD ESTLIN) CUMMINGS fish like cheese..... sometimes, ......................sometimes some fish like cheese
OZZY OSBOURNE Did you slip in some cheese? Did it make you hate cheese, which you had previously loved? Why not su...
STEWART LEE Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE George H. W. Bush may be a World War II hero and New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ...
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY Meat!" he said scornfully. "I'm a vegetarian."

You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminum can...
RICK RIORDAN M-O-T-H-E-R
M is for the million things she gave me,
O means only that she's growing old,
T...
HOWARD JOHNSON Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles ...
VERA NAZARIAN P...U...D...D...I...N...G"
"Pudding," said Roger. "They've kept some for us."
"She hasn't ...
ARTHUR RANSOME A thousand years or more ago,
When I was newly sewn,
There lived four wizards of renown, J.K. ROWLING It was a careworn face. But most of the lines, if followed back like a trail, would lead to happines...
LOUISE PENNY He Liked Pizzas, she Burger.
He Liked Italian, she Continental.
He Liked muffins, she puff...
NISHANT KUMAR May be its mine bad-luck
Or yours not to get me
But I still have hope
Of being you...
HASIL PAUDYAL Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her dear dog a bone.
Though the cupb...
KRISTEN MCKEE You are safe with me."
"I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.
A.S. BYATT Before you speak "THINK"
T- Is it "True"?
H- Is it "Humble"?
I- Is it "Inspirational"...
ABHINAV KUSHWAHA I AM AN INDIAN,
LIKE OTHER BILLION,
HAPPY REPUBLIC DAY,
HOPE TO FIND A GOOD WAY,
MERLIN8THOMAS Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. CHESTERTON Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. CHESTERTON Heiraten heißt das Mögliche t(h)un, einander zum Ekel zu werden.


(Marrying means ...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER The Truth about America’s Silicon Valley-
Angels in the Silicon

Riveting and insig...
RICHARD THEODOR KUSIOLEK Too many people are buying things they can't afford, with money that they don't have... to impress p...
WILL SMITH Himself an ugly man, insignificant
of appearance, he prized very highly comeliness in others.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The Business of Our Firm is Business"
-Donald W. Hudspeth from:

"The Business of Ame...
CALVIN COOLIDGE Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're ...
GEORGE HARRISON Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
H...
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH You write poetry?" Klaus asked.
He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just...
LEMONY SNICKET Where was his knife, upon which he relied? He had cut cheese for their noonday meal, and had packed ...
JACK VANCE Bitter disappointment pushed tears from her eyes.
"Now what's wrong? I said you could wear it."...
DEEANNE GIST Before my autism diagnosis I
knew I struggled with life but thought it was
my fault that I...
TINA J. RICHARDSON It’s stranger than every strangeness
And the dreams of all the poets
And the thoughts of...
ALBERTO CAEIRO Here's another poem,
like all others before and after,
dedicated to you.
There isn't ...
KAMAND KOJOURI MOTHERS
Measuring
Out
Their
Highest
Effo...
RICHELLE E. GOODRICH The life spills over, some days.
She cannot be at rest,
Wishes she could explode

ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. CHESTERTON Poets write beautiful words to describe
savagery-wrapped civilization nowadays.
TOBA BETA Good literacy skills can help children:

-Be healthy and safe.
-Do their homework to ...
SORAYA DIASE COFFELT I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; ...
T.S. ELIOT I love thee for a heart that’s kind--not for the knowledge in thy mind.
W.H. DAVIES Some people discard their childhood like an old hat.
They forget about it like a phone number ...
ERICK KäSTNER Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.

- Jane
J.R. WARD it is to be savored like a
seabreeze-whispered

dream...in the mysterious
blue ...
SANOBER KHAN But I've never even been to Olympus! Zeus is crazy!"

Chiron and Grover glanced nervously ...
RICK RIORDAN INVISIBLE BOY
And here we see the invisible boy
In his lovely invisible house,
Feedin...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN [Reed said the delays give companies like his the motivation and opportunity

to look more ...
BRUCE REED I feel like the secretary to the morning whose only/
responsibility is to take down its bright,...
BILLY COLLINS Blessed are the weird people:
poets, misfits, writers
mystics, painters, troubadours
JACOB NORDBY Give me the Love that leads the way
The Faith that nothing can dismay
The Hope no disappoi...
AMY CARMICHAEL Coraline's father stopped working and made them all dinner.

Coraline was disgusted. "Dadd...
NEIL GAIMAN The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wak...
HELEN BEVINGTON She shook her head as she confessed, "I want it so much, I'm afraid to hope."
"Never be afraid...
LISA KLEYPAS You're like someone from a fairy story written in a language I don't even know."

"The pri...
LISA KLEYPAS Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.'
I should be honore...
PHILIPPA GREGORY George W. Bush's first appointment, Dick Cheney, makes it crystal clear
that Bush's judicial ap...
CAROLYN MALONEY I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. "You know, ge...
SARAH DESSEN Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride," EDGAR ALLAN POE W: Nobody's so gullible as scientists. All the phony mediums say so. Can't quite see why.

AGATHA CHRISTIE Want some tea?" she said.
"What?"
"I thought some tea might be nice. A nice cup of oolong....
D.L. KING Cancer is a curious thing...
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
I...
W. H. AUDEN Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows...
OLIVER GOLDSMITH Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption
Winding in and winding out
The sh...
DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL Figs are delicious with soft cheese and ham,
Toast is quite scrumptious with butter and jam, ANGELICA BANKS Every person has the power to make others happy.
Some do it simply by entering a room --
oth...
WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no re...
JOHN LENNON

More W. H. Auden

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Para...
W. H. AUDEN May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, consideri...
W. H. AUDEN All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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 To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. AUDEN You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
W. H. AUDEN In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him ...
W. H. AUDEN 'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature...
W. H. AUDEN Art is born of humiliation.
W. H. AUDEN Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. AUDEN In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. AUDEN Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AUDEN What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed li...
W. H. AUDEN If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the othe...
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 In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me...
W. H. AUDEN Continuing a short series on forgiveness: Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. ("To know all i...
W. H. AUDEN All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Churc...
W. H. AUDEN Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South ...
W. H. AUDEN All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Par...
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. AUDEN We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W H AUDEN A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
W. H. AUDEN Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and...
W. H. AUDEN Eagerly, musician,Sweep your string,So we may sing,Elated, optative,Our several voicesInterblending,...
W. H. AUDEN The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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 You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.
W. H. AUDEN We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W. H. AUDEN You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a s...
W. H. AUDEN When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mist...
W. H. AUDEN In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it b...
W. H. AUDEN A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A c...
W. H. AUDEN Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinkin...
W. H. AUDEN Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of charac...
W. H. AUDEN It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say,...
W. H. AUDEN Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life ...
W. H. AUDEN Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are sha...
W. H. AUDEN A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. AUDEN Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who cl...
W. H. AUDEN To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrat...
W. H. AUDEN There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them...
W. H. AUDEN The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a s...
W. H. AUDEN My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible...
W. H. AUDEN Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am fr...
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. AUDEN It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which...
W. H. AUDEN Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'l...
W. H. AUDEN Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. AUDEN Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. ...
W. H. AUDEN We must love one another or die.
W. H. AUDEN We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country becaus...
W. H. AUDEN A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. AUDEN In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for...
W. H. AUDEN A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
W. H. AUDEN The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
W. H. AUDEN What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercours...
W. H. AUDEN Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefe...
W. H. AUDEN The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life...
W. H. AUDEN How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so hig...
W. H. AUDEN Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a f...
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in...
W. H. AUDEN To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual s...
W. H. AUDEN Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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 No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willful...
W. H. AUDEN The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when ...
W. H. AUDEN A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. AUDEN Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of...
W. H. AUDEN It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself...
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 Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their trivial...
W. H. AUDEN God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of ho...
W. H. AUDEN Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to...
W. H. AUDEN No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. AUDEN Funeral Blues


W. H. AUDEN Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so con...
W. H. AUDEN One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. AUDEN Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.
W. H. AUDEN And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to ...
W. H. AUDEN Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th...
W. H. AUDEN All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular c...
W. H. AUDEN It is... axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people b...
W. H. AUDEN Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. AUDEN May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, consideri...
W. H. AUDEN My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. AUDEN Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would cal...
W. H. AUDEN Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, ...
W. H. AUDEN The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet dev...
W. H. AUDEN Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to...
W. H. AUDEN Cancer is a curious thing...
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
I...
W. H. AUDEN I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make ...
W. H. AUDEN It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his...
W. H. AUDEN Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.
W. H. AUDEN Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their aff...
W. H. AUDEN As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption....
W. H. AUDEN You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
W. H. AUDEN Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a m...
W. H. AUDEN A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good ...
W. H. AUDEN But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided.
A continent for better or worse divided. W. H. AUDEN If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all ...
W. H. AUDEN Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...
W. H. AUDEN No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the ...
W. H. AUDEN The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father h...
W. H. AUDEN God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W. H. AUDEN The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in ...
W. H. AUDEN The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most pa...
W. H. AUDEN Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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 Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the ot...
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W H AUDEN It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in whi...
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
W. H. AUDEN One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. AUDEN All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. AUDEN I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the m...
W. H. AUDEN We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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 A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. AUDEN The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as...
W. H. AUDEN History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology ...
W. H. AUDEN When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into ...
W. H. AUDEN He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, ...
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
W. H. AUDEN To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. AUDEN No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN False enchantment can last a lifetime.
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffoc...
W. H. AUDEN Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores
W. H. AUDEN 'Healing,'' Papa would tell me, ''is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AUDEN Embrace me, belly, like a bride.
W. H. AUDEN Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession
W. H. AUDEN O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges / To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma.
W. H. AUDEN 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 ...
W. H. AUDEN The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago /...
W. H. AUDEN The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very dif...
W. H. AUDEN If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. AUDEN If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don't raise your hands because I am a...
W. H. AUDEN Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. AUDEN Look, stranger, at this island now / The leaping light for your delight discovers.
W. H. AUDEN Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their conscience...
W. H. AUDEN Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in ...
W. H. AUDEN Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good
W. H. AUDEN lay your faithless head upon my arm
W. H. AUDEN 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