FastSaying

Cancer is a curious thing...
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
It's like some hidden assassin,
Waiting to strike at you.

Childless women get it,
And men when they retire.
It


W. H. Auden

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W. H. AUDEN All this waiting.
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They knock to tell us to ...
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Women have no
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ANA CASTILLO To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na-No

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W.B. YEATS Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
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KAMAND KOJOURI one thing I don’t need
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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
thou...
MARY OLIVER Lose control
Increasing pace
Warped and bewitched
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Whatev...
MUSE Every time you
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you yell at her
out of love
you teach her ...
RUPI KAUR i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like
when i am sad
i don’t cry i pour RUPI KAUR One day you finally knew
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though the voices around you
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MARY OLIVER WHAT PEOPLE MAY THINK

Some people cower
and wince and shrink,
owing to fear of<...
PIET HEIN When the highest type of men hear Tao,
They diligently practice it.
When the average type of m...
LAO-TZU I believe that we are who we choose to be.

Nobody is going to come and save you. You've g...
BARRY MANILOW They won't live their lives...
They see things they don't wanna see
Yet they won't shut t...
FLONJA AKSHIJA I hold it true that thoughts are things
Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings,
And that w...
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX Don't bother

Me with promises. Vows
are cheaply manufactured,
come with no gua...
ELLEN HOPKINS You wanted to live," he says.

"You say that like it's a good thing. A virtue."

STEPHANIE KUEHN There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but t...
MAYA ANGELOU Can I buy you a drink when you get off?"

"I don't drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs."
ERIC JEROME DICKEY The attire, before and now:

When it fits you, it feels you.
When they see you, you s...
BHAVIK SARKHEDI The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI they thought that writing had
something to do with
the politics of the
thing.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI When I wake up in the afternoon
Which it pleases me to do
Don't nobody bring me no bad new...
CHARLIE SMALLS A Word is Dead

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I sa...
EMILY DICKINSON Ansel: Is it on?

John: It is on.

Shailene: Ansel paints miniatures.

JOHN GREEN Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on t...
LINDA PASTAN They tell us the only way to move on
is to forget.
“Forgive,” they say.
Realise ...
KAMAND KOJOURI What is this love
that makes me see beauty,
and makes every beautiful thing
bring yo...
KAMAND KOJOURI That thing you thought you'd do
You start to think you can't;
You always say tomorrow,
MARGO T. ROSE Communication


Is a work of art

Some are normally born with it

A. SALEH People always ask me
"Son what does it take
To reach out and touch your dreams?"
To t...
TIM MCGRAW I KNEW IT WAS OVER

when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring
when you use...
DAPHNE GOTTLIEB alone with everybody


the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in the...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI Some like them hot,some like them cold.
Some like them when they're not to darn old
Some l...
RING LARDNER The dead do not need
aspirin or
sorrow,
I suppose.
but they might need
rain...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The Lilly in a Christal

You have beheld a smiling Rose
When ...
ROBERT HERRICK I must confess, that my
heart is like a frozen lake,
only pretends to be firm,
to sh...
AKASH MANDAL And there you are
on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them ...
MARY OLIVER the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
CHARLES BUKOWSKI In your hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
They are alive.
Who would ...
MARY OLIVER On building homes for fallen angels:

When I was small - I sought a home,
a place to ...
WILL ADVISE It's not easy, but do it anyway

It's not easy to love,
when you get resentment in re...
HENNA SOHAIL It's not easy, but do it anyway

It's not easy to love,
when you get resentment in re...
HENNA SOHAIL Before you speak "THINK"
T- Is it "True"?
H- Is it "Humble"?
I- Is it "Inspirational"...
ABHINAV KUSHWAHA People love to be scared because it's a cathartic experience, because you get to experience all thos...
FRANK SPOTNITZ After the second world war
in 1948
they founded the UN,
the United Nations
so th...
AD DE BONT Yawn...

I believe that I love sleep
much more than anybody I’ve ever
met.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes;
I wonder if It weighs like Mine,<...
EMILY DICKINSON what do you miss
do they miss you
when they're around
do they support your peace
R.H. SIN What if dragons breathed bubbles
and purred when they cuddled
and giggled at chivalrous ...
RICHELLE E. GOODRICH Technically, you don't pay me.
And technically, most of what I do is "think."

I...rr...
HOWARD TAYLER Holy men tell us life is a mystery.
They embrace that concept happily.
But some mysteries ...
DEAN KOONTZ When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad... DR. SEUSS i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and n...
E.E. CUMMINGS IF SOMEONE KEEPS DOING WHAT THEY'RE DOING
THEY WILL GET BETTER AT IT,
BUT....
THEY ...
QWANA REYNOLDS-FRASIER as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI And recite to them the news of Abraham
When he said to his father and his people: What do you ...
QURAN What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women ...
WALT WHITMAN Some are sad.
And some are glad.
And some are very, very bad.


Why are the...
DR. SEUSS Tell me what I can do to help you feel better."

Well...I always like when you kiss me...<...
KRISTIN CASHORE Glossa

Time goes by, time comes along,
All is old and all is new;
What is righ...
MIHAI EMINESCU God abides in men"

"God abides in men,
These are men who are simple,
they are f...
CARYLL HOUSELANDER It’s an alien.”

“Sand crab,” Leon said. “It won’t hurt you.”

“...
MAGGIE STIEFVATER unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI I can't get it out," she said.

"Just pull at it."

"It hurts. It's throbbing."<...
LISA KLEYPAS what a shame we all became such fragile, broken things.
A memory remains just a tiny spark.
HAYLEY WILLIAMS there are some poems
that we leave behind
some that leave us behind

while some ...
SANOBER KHAN Boo: "Go talk to her."

Callum: "About what?"

Boo: "Anything."

Callu...
MAUREEN JOHNSON I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair collector."

"That's good", said Ishvar tent...
ROHINTON MISTRY ...feel the fierce way desire
tourniquets itself around you and
clings

Clubland...
CLINT CATALYST If they wanted Adarlan's Assassin, they'd get her.

And Wyrd help them when she arrived.
SARAH J. MAAS The Formless Way
We look at it, and do not see it; it is invisible.
We listen to it, and d...
LAO TZU I promise you
I will try harder
to be better.
I
have battled with things
...
TYLER KNOTT GREGSON Everything is temporary,
almost like a passing fase,
some of laughter
Some of pain...
NIKKI ROWE The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation. RUMI Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. The...
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE The silence wasn't
like the ones I'd known
lately, though: it wasn't empty as much as chos...
SARAH DESSEN Spilling a Secret

What its size,
will have varying
consequences. It’s not ...
ELLEN HOPKINS do you dare to step in-
to the vulnerable black, stripped
to the soul with human blindnes...
BETH MOREY At birth and at dawn
for each and every day
it triumphs over the eclipse.

It i...
AKILNATHAN LOGESWARAN Patience, though I have not
The thing that I require,
I must of force, God wot,
Forbear my...
SIR THOMAS WYATT You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
an...
DR. SEUSS DEMON MATH
What is JUST in a world
you've ripped in two
as if there could be
...
KAMI GARCIA Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you; DOROTHY PARKER Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you; DOROTHY PARKER I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are...
PABLO NERUDA Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference ...
LAO TZU The Master's Sacred Knowledge.

Love is the treasure you should seek!

The grea...
ALLAN RUFUS THE UNFORGIVEN


Tell me if you've ever had to deal with these kinds of people:
...
SUZY KASSEM A Friend
Someone
You're happy to see,
Who's happy to see you.
Someone
You l...
NANCY J. CAVANAUGH

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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.
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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...
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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.
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W. H. AUDEN A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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W. H. AUDEN The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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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...
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W. H. AUDEN I and the public know
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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...
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W. H. AUDEN Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to...
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W. H. AUDEN One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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W. H. AUDEN And none will hear the postman's knock
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W. H. AUDEN All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular c...
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W. H. AUDEN Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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W. H. AUDEN My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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W. H. AUDEN Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, ...
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W. H. AUDEN Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to...
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.
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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.
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W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
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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
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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