FastSaying

I dislike society because conversation exhausts my brain more than silent thought - again, I cannot hold my water long enough for a prolonged conversation.


W. H. Davies

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More of your conversation would infect my brain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
'Ride,' Pleasure said;
'Walk,' Joy replied.
W.H. DAVIES I love thee for a heart that’s kind--not for the knowledge in thy mind.
W.H. DAVIES No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No ti...
W.H. DAVIES This man has talent, that man genius
And here's the strange and cruel difference:
Talent g...
W.H. DAVIES I'm a point of conversation for my friends.
DANIEL PORTMAN A deep conversation with someone is not less than a brain therapy!
SUPERNA BATHEJA Hold that thought. This sounds like the kind of conversation I’ll need pants for.” It
SAM SYKES What is this life so full of care,
We don't have time to stand and stare.
W.H. DAVIES Think not for this, however, the poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall r...
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I wou...
JULIET MARILLIER My brain never turns off of songwriting. Every conversation, everything I see, I'm just kind of ...
DUSTIN LYNCH What is reading, but silent conversation.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR What is reading, but silent conversation.
CHARLES LAMB What is reading but silent conversation.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Reading a book is a silent conversation between two friends.
AMAN JASSAL We'll have less and less human interaction, we'll see less conversation at the water cooler, which l...
FRANK DZUBEK In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation ...
JAMES REMAR Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD People seem to see no difference between an intimate conversation and a conversation at the water co...
MIKE FARRELL I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
FRANçOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Conceit contributes more to conversation than wit.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCALD All my life, I never realized you could have a conversation with a ghost.
POE BALLANTINE give me raw conversation without filters or restraints. i yearn for something deeper, i long for und...
R.H. SIN He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself. I should be well enough educated for my desti...
CHARLES DICKENS Your ignorance cramps my conversation
BOB HOPE Your ignorance, cramps my conversation.
SIR ANTHONY HAWKINS Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
ANONYMOUS I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
ANTHONY HOPE I never, with important air, In conversation overbear. . . . . My tongue within my lips ...
JOHN GAY He wasn't out, but he wasn't there. I had a conversation with him and it was more like a conversatio...
LINDY RUFF In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.
GEORGE HERBERT my 40-minute conversation with him.
RAY LAHOOD I thought in that 45-minute conversation, we moved towards each other.
GEORGE KARL His laughter, which was never far below the surface of his conversation, now sparkled like a splash ...
JOSEPH LELYVELD He said I'm so proud of my daughter, and I love you and dad so much. That was the last conversation ...
JULIA ALLEN I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants, a...
JAMES HILTON I battled with my weight as a teenager, partly because there wasn't the information or conversat...
ALISON SWEENEY I wish my artwork could persuade millions of people to join a global conversation about sustainabili...
EDWARD BURTYNSKY Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER I gain strength from postive thought and from the daily conversation with God.
OTTMAR HITZFELD Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just ...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON That process, in my opinion, takes longer just because you have more conversation but I believe it's...
DUANE VAN GORP I got my hair highlighted because I thought some strands were more important than others.
MITCH HEDBERG Nothing lowers the level on conversation more than raising the voice.
STANLEY HOROWITZ Nothing lowers the level of conversation more than raising the voice
STANLEY HOROWITZ This was the first conversation, we will hold further meetings.
JAROSLAW KACZYNSKI Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart som...
PAULO COELHO Therefore I say again I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul Refuse you for my judge, whom yet onc...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I never had a single conversation about politics with Ross Perot in my life; still haven't.
JAMES STOCKDALE I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation.
TARA BRAY SMITH My mind and my body are having a conversation, and there's no panel for the heart, his say is irrele...
DEDRICK D. L. PITTER There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE I would rather take hellebore than spend a conversation with a good, little man.
EDWARD DAHLBERG As I thought I had travelled through life long enough alone and thought it was about time to take a ...
CALAMITY JANE My accent remained terrible. It was very hard for me to initiate any conversation with someone I did...
LAWRENCE WELK I always enjoy conversation more if there is some substance to it - which is a just incredibly hilar...
JOSS WHEDON It's not my place to judge him. I'm sure it's difficult enough. This is a conversation that I'm not ...
TROT NIXON Your conscious brain cannot multitask. If I'm speaking to you and checking my I-Phone at the sam...
DEEPAK CHOPRA To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and...
ADAM GRANT For being a young guy, I'm articulate and can hold a decent conversation with somebody. But I...
LARRY FITZGERALD The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew
RICK PERLSTEIN I don't really have an aversion to watching myself. I think I've been doing it for long enou...
MAE WHITMAN As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that i...
BRUCE LEE My mother makes up for all shortcomings because she birthed Ginnie. I might not have loads of friend...
LINDSEY LEAVITT When I wake up, I'll go through emails on my iPhone - the junk email. At that point, my brain is...
SAM TRAMMELL Vegans have a way of circling every conversation back to food, much like born-again Christians have ...
WILL POTTER Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversatio...
PAUL THEROUX My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there...
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about th...
EMILY POST We thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to allow for interaction and conversation for folks...
MAUREEN TAYLOR Marriage is one long conversation, checkered by disputes.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON This weekend we had a similar conversation, and I am running because we believe that with the curren...
DAVID HAILEY I just had that conversation this morning with my doctor. I just got back from the hospital a half-h...
KAREN DUFFY At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone's phone conversation without a warra...
VLADIMIR PUTIN You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
PLATO Some years ago, I read an article about two people in the arts (alas, I can’t remember who they we...
TERRI WINDLING I shall never have a bath again," I said.
"Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said....
ROALD DAHL I threw an etiquette party and served nothing but beans and sparkling water. The topic of conversati...
BAUVARD My views tend to be centrist. I'm not a big fan of George W., but my politics tend to be more Re...
JEFFREY SKOLL I think perhaps I will always hold a candle for you – even until it burns my hand.
And when t...
RANATA SUZUKI I've found that if I say what I'm really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what th...
CAROL GILLIGAN Sometimes we want something so much that God will have us give it up so we can grow
(I CANNOT REMEMBER) Bleep theory belongs in philosophy, not a science class. But I think it does have enough merit to be...
ERIC JOHNSON I should hate to be employed and have no time for my needlework and my painting and playing the pian...
TOM HOLT I just like people. I'll hold a conversation at a gas station. It's not about the fame and t...
LIONEL RICHIE I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in co...
ANNE BRONTë The thought of my mother talking to me about sex makes me want to stab my eyes out with a fork, goug...
ADDISON MOORE A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
ANDRE MAUROIS Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance wh...
JOSEPH ADDISON Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance w...
JOSEPH ADDISON Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of u...
JOHN CLEESE You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
RICHARD LINGARD You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
PLATO I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mi...
BEN BRANTLEY

More W. H. Davies

It was the rainbow gave thee birth, and left thee all her lovely hues.
W. H. DAVIES It was a proof of Welsh good nature: so long as I had a friend that knew and could introduce me, the...
W. H. DAVIES I had now been in the United States of America something like five years, working here and there as ...
W. H. DAVIES Summer boarders often left clothes behind, and of what use were they to the landladies, for no rag-a...
W. H. DAVIES I had made up my mind to find a woman to share my life: one who would leave London altogether and go...
W. H. DAVIES However careful a tramp may be to avoid places where there is abundant work, he cannot always succee...
W. H. DAVIES My impression of Americans from the beginning is of the best, and I have never since had cause to al...
W. H. DAVIES It has always been a wonder to me where my conversational power has gone: at the present time, I can...
W. H. DAVIES I like to see a good scientific bout by men who know the use of their hands but would rather walk tw...
W. H. DAVIES Mother's father and brothers all took great interest in pugilism, and they knew the game well fr...
W. H. DAVIES But cats to me are strange, so strange I cannot sleep if one is near.
W. H. DAVIES Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink.
W. H. DAVIES How the snow falls in the north! Flake on flake falling incessantly, until the small dingles are alm...
W. H. DAVIES Being in this fine mood, I spoke to a little boy, whom I saw playing alone in the road, asking him w...
W. H. DAVIES What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?
W. H. DAVIES I like to give pennies to children, but unfortunately, a man cannot do these things if he lives in a...
W. H. DAVIES As long as I love Beauty I am young.
W. H. DAVIES The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him.
W. H. DAVIES My own wandering blood comes from my seafaring grandfather, who, after he had left the sea and settl...
W. H. DAVIES We were determined to be in the fashion, and to visit the various delightful watering places on Long...
W. H. DAVIES Cockneys make good beggars. They are held in high esteem by the fraternity in America. Their resourc...
W. H. DAVIES There is quite a large clan of Scotties among American beggars. He is a good beggar for the simple r...
W. H. DAVIES I don't suppose there is a more daring or more impudent rascal on earth than a good American beg...
W. H. DAVIES It is not altogether shyness that now makes me unsuccessful in company. Sometimes it is a state of m...
W. H. DAVIES What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?
WILLIAM H. DAVIES What's all this fuss about fathers being present at the birth of their children? The way events are ...
GEORGE H. DAVIES Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Para...
W. H. AUDEN The more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much.
W. H. MURRAY All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
W. H. MURRAY Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
W. H. MURRAY 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 Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regre...
W. H. SHELDON 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 Be true to the best you know. This is your high ideal. If you do your best, you cannot do more.
H. W. DRESSES 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 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 Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong.
H. W. LONGFELLOW You would attain to the divine perfection....
H. W. LONGFELLOW Something attempted, something done, Has earned a nights repose.
H. W. LONGFELLOW The worst bankruptcy in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm.
H. W. ARNOLD 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 We are none of us infallible--not even the youngest of us.
W. H. THOMPSON 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 Commemoration of John Wycliffe, Reformer, 1384 [John] Wycliffe's doctrine of "dominion founded i...
W. H. SUMMERS 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