FastSaying

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.


W. H. Auden

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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