The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
W. H. Auden
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet dev...
WYSTAN HUGH 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 Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for,...
C. JOYBELL C. I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a litt...
J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN 4-H students would have to leave a paper trail of the movement of their animals. If you own a horse ...
HOWARD GARRETT Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. T...
KAHLIL GIBRAN They have formed their own 4-H club - the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.
SPIRO T. AGNEW They have formed their own 4-H club - the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.
SPIRO AGNEW Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many few...
GARY STEINER All the children had to wear a gas mask in case of a gas attack by the Germans. They tried to make t...
GERALD SCARFE These animals have developed the most phenomenal adaptations. They can turn off their reproductive p...
MARK WILLIAMS I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain ri...
JIMMY STEWART Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generatio...
TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON We know that children have always played a role in assisting their families, especially in minority ...
JOSEFINA CARBONELL I would guess about half of us are here through no fault of our own. Yet they want to treat us like ...
LEE NOBLE I first met the subject of X-ray diffraction of crystals in the pages of the book W. H. Bragg wrote ...
DOROTHY HODGKIN The irony of life is that those who wear masks often tell us more truths than those with open faces.
MARIE LU Highways are huge. Not only for the amount of land covered by highways but also with the associated ...
CHRIS SERVHEEN Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itsel...
KHALIL GIBRAN You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry a...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimate...
POPE JOHN PAUL II I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly moth...
POPE JOHN PAUL II The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a pro...
POPE JOHN PAUL II From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
POPE JOHN PAUL II An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
POPE JOHN PAUL II Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, on...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressi...
POPE JOHN PAUL II The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not d...
POPE JOHN PAUL II To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law e...
POPE JOHN PAUL II You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day t...
POPE JOHN PAUL II The future starts today, not tomorrow.
POPE JOHN PAUL II The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
POPE JOHN PAUL II Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and b...
POPE JOHN PAUL II The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to re...
POPE JOHN PAUL II Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.
POPE JOHN PAUL II Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, ther...
POPE JOHN PAUL II There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you...
POPE JOHN PAUL II I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.
POPE JOHN PAUL II For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who ha...
PLATO We were not born with a purpose of marrying and giving life to a son-animals are able to have childr...
SUNDAY ADELAJA Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption. They are splendid beings ...
MARC BEKOFF Sections of it are developed but it's not at announcement stage yet.
MARGARET MURPHY Don’t be so hard on yourself, You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that...
CHRISTOPHER MOORE Though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year roun...
THOMAS HARDY What I learned from when I hired sitters is that we as a family developed a great deal of affection ...
DD HELLEBUSH The answer to the question ‘How many children do you have?’ and the one to the question ‘How m...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA The scars of others should teach us caution.
ST. JEROME They talk like angels but they live like men.
ST. JEROME Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not...
SAINT AUGUSTINE The most High approveth not the gifts of the wicked.
SAINT PATRICK I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worth...
SAINT PATRICK He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presen...
SAINT PATRICK I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion, but I sold my noble...
SAINT PATRICK I have had the good fortune through my God that I should never abandon his people whom I have acquir...
SAINT PATRICK The Lord discovered to me a sense of my unbelief that, though late, I should remember my transgressi...
SAINT PATRICK Let who will scoff and revile - I will not remain silent; neither will I conceal the signs and wonde...
SAINT PATRICK I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, bec...
SAINT PATRICK I have a Creator who knew all things, even before they were made - even me, his poor little child.
SAINT PATRICK I have vowed to my God to teach the heathen, though I be despised by some.
SAINT PATRICK No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small acco...
SAINT PATRICK The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins.
SAINT PATRICK It was not any grace in me, but God that put this earnest care into my heart, that I should be one o...
SAINT PATRICK Sufficient for me is that honour which is not seen of men but is felt in the heart, as faithful is H...
SAINT PATRICK Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came and in h...
SAINT PATRICK I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of ...
SAINT PATRICK The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough.
SAINT PATRICK Among the many signs of a lively faith and hope we have in eternal life, one of the surest is not be...
SAINT IGNATIUS I can love a person in this life only insofar as he tries to advance in the praise and service of Go...
SAINT IGNATIUS Some indeed have tears naturally, when the higher motion of the soul makes itself felt in the lower,...
SAINT IGNATIUS The principal end both of my father and of myself in the conquest of India... has been the propagati...
SAINT IGNATIUS We should love the body insofar as it is obedient and helpful to the soul, since the soul, with the ...
SAINT IGNATIUS We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierar...
SAINT IGNATIUS It is one thing to be eloquent and charming in profane speech, and another when the one speaking as ...
SAINT IGNATIUS Remember that bodily exercise, when it is well ordered, as I have said, is also prayer by means of w...
SAINT IGNATIUS In the light of the Divine Goodness, it seems to me, though others may think differently, that ingra...
SAINT IGNATIUS Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the impe...
SAINT IGNATIUS Be generous to the poor orphans and those in need. The man to whom our Lord has been liberal ought n...
SAINT IGNATIUS Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
SAINT IGNATIUS In the fallen there is danger of pride and vainglory, since they prefer their own judgment to the ju...
SAINT IGNATIUS May God our Lord never let me harm anyone when I cannot help him!
SAINT IGNATIUS True, I am in love with suffering, but I do not know if I deserve the honor.
SAINT IGNATIUS May the perfect grace and eternal love of Christ our Lord be our never-failing protection and help.
SAINT IGNATIUS For those who love, nothing is too difficult, especially when it is done for the love of our Lord Je...
SAINT IGNATIUS If God has given you the world's goods in abundance, it is to help you gain those of Heaven and ...
SAINT IGNATIUS Knowledge is sometimes superfluous: when we need it, we have it not.
SAINT BERNARD For every benefit conferred, God is to be praised in his gifts. Otherwise when the time of judgment ...
SAINT BERNARD Custom turns everything upside down. Give it time, and what can resist its hardening effect? What do...
SAINT BERNARD
More W. H. Auden
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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 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 A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
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