I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.


W. H. Auden

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As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun.
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Oh my God, she's fashion road-kill!
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the lights fade to black.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, consideri...
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a ...
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To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him ...
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Art is born of humiliation.
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Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed li...
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the othe...
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
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In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me...
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Continuing a short series on forgiveness: Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. ("To know all i...
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All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Churc...
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Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South ...
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Par...
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and...
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Eagerly, musician,Sweep your string,So we may sing,Elated, optative,Our several voicesInterblending,...
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the oth...
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You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.
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We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a s...
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When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mist...
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it b...
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A c...
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Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinkin...
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of charac...
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say,...
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life ...
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are sha...
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who cl...
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrat...
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them...
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The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a s...
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My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible...
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Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am fr...
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A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
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It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which...
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'l...
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. ...
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We must love one another or die.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country becaus...
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for...
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercours...
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefe...
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The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life...
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How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so hig...
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Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a f...
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in...
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual s...
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willful...
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when ...
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of...
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself...
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A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scien...
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their trivial...
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of ho...
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to...
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so con...
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.
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And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to ...
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th...
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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular c...
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It is... axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people b...
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, consideri...
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would cal...
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, ...
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet dev...
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to...
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Cancer is a curious thing...
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
I...
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I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make ...
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his...
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Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their aff...
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As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption....
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a m...
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good ...
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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 ...
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the ...
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father h...
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in ...
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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most pa...
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will...
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the ot...
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A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
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It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in whi...
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as...
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology ...
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into ...
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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...
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores
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'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.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession
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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...
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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...
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in ...
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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