It was the rainbow gave thee birth, and left thee all her lovely hues.
W. H. Davies
Related
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 And Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion which I gave thee, of which I said unto thee, Set i...
BIBLE Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with r...
AKHENATON AKHENATON Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with r...
AKHENATON What is this life so full of care,
We don't have time to stand and stare.
W.H. DAVIES Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me That now she knows, When I resemble her to the...
EDMUND WALLER Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.
BIBLE Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, / The shooting-stars attend thee; / And the elves also,/ Whose lit...
ROBERT HERRICK Whatever may befall thee, it was preordained for thee from everlasting
MARCUS AURELIUS Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE O beautiful rainbow;--all woven of light!
There's not in thy tissue one shadow of night;
Heave...
MRS. SARAH JOSEPHA HALE Without thee I am all unblessed,
And wholly blessed in thee alone.
GEORGE W. BETHUNE Nearer, my God, to Thee--
Nearer to Thee--
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
...
MRS. SARAH FLOWER ADAMS England with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Wh...
WILLIAM COWPER With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with
all my worldly goods I thee endow.
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER Fare thee well, fare thee well / I am leaving, yes I'll leave it all to you
ALEX KAPRANOS She has deceived her father, and may thee.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast w...
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Good luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth
The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth.
JOHN MILTON This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The virgin the daughter of Zion hath desp...
BIBLE But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, whi...
BIBLE Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming:
it stirreth up the dead for thee, ...
BIBLE But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver thee. Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the LORD, which I...
BIBLE But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls
of the air, and they shall tell th...
BIBLE But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell the...
BIBLE But ask now the beasts, any they shall teach thee; and the fowls
of the air, and they shall tell th...
BIBLE Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our f...
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Hail to thee, lady! and the grace of heaven,
Before, behind thee, and on every hand,
Enwheel ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Teach me, my god and King, / In all things Thee to see, / And what I do in anything / To do it as fo...
GEORGE HERBERT If thee marries for money, thee surely will earn it.
EZRA BOWEN If thee marries for money, thee surely will earn it
EZRA BOWEN The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine...
BIBLE And Elkanah her husband said unto her, Do what seemeth thee good; tarry until thou have weaned him; ...
BIBLE Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be th...
BIBLE The LORD judge between me and thee, and the LORD avenge me of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon ...
BIBLE Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Hold thou her sinless who has sinned for thee
SENECA I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to t...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Remember thee! remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life's burning stream
Remorse and sham...
GEORGE GORDON BYRON And taught by thee the Church prolongs
Her hymns of high thanksgiving still.
JOHN KEBLE And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou ...
BIBLE Let me advise thee not to talk of thyself as being old. There is something in Mind Cure, after all, ...
HANNAH WHITALL SMITH Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them,...
BIBLE Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
BIBLE And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she ...
BIBLE In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, hast so m...
JOSEPH ADDISON Good-bye -- good bye, all. It is God's way. His will, not ours, be done. Nearer my God to Thee, near...
WILLIAM MCKINLEY And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, whi...
BIBLE And the cook took up the shoulder, and that which was upon it, and set it before Saul. And Samuel sa...
BIBLE I will charge thee nothing but the promise that thee will help the next man thee finds in trouble.
MENNONITE PROVERB All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee to me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which...
BIBLE I kissed thee, ere I killed thee.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 "I have not sought Thee, I have not found Thee, I have no...
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI On thee, Jesus, all our hopes depend. In thee all power is vested, even power to make sinful creatur...
ADONIRAM JUDSON There's not a wind but whispers of thy name; And not a flow'r that grows beneath the moon, B...
BRYAN PROCTER Govern well thy appetite, lest Sin
Surprise thee, and her black attendant Death.
JOHN MILTON How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul c...
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING May the alert and the watchful divinities guard thee, may he that sleeps not and nods not guard thee...
ATHARVA VEDA Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and wit...
BIBLE Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, / How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee? / Wider...
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON Cloath thee in war, arme thee in peace.
GEORGE HERBERT Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Get thee to a nunnery.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Fare thee well! and if for ever, / Still for ever, fare thee well.
LORD BYRON We meet todayTo thank Thee for the era done,And Thee for the opening one
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone.
THOMAS MOORE 'Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone
THOMAS MORE But since the world, which thou art to strive against, is not without thee, but within thee, it foll...
JOHANN ARNDT And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do...
BIBLE Love Him, and keep Him for thy Friend, who, when all go away, will not forsake thee, nor suffer thee...
THOMAS KEMPIS Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.
BIBLE And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at al...
BIBLE For when David was up in the morning, the word of the LORD came unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, ...
BIBLE Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid...for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth ...
BIBLE Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All things pass; God never changes. Patience atta...
SOURCE UNKNOWN I love thee as I love all that we have fought for. I love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY I send thee myrrh, not that thou mayest be by it perfumed, but it perfumed by thee
GREEK PROVERB He who has injured thee was stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare t...
SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter in...
BIBLE There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIAL There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
MARTIAL Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON) And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is ...
BIBLE With thee conversing I forget all time.
JOHN MILTON And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast...
BIBLE In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell an...
JAKOB BOHME I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou are not there;
I fill my arms with tho...
JOHN CLARE The Rainbow comes and goes,And lovely is the Rose.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring fr...
BIBLE Rest lightly on her earth, for she trod never heavily on thee
MARCUS AURELIUS Nose, nose, holly red nose,
And who gave thee that jolly red nose?
Nutmegs and ginger, cinammo...
FRANCIS BEAUMONT AND JOHN FLETCHER Nose, nose, jolly red nose, / And who gave thee this jolly red nose? . . . / Nutmegs and ginger, cin...
FRANCIS BEAUMONT
More 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 I dislike society because conversation exhausts my brain more than silent thought - again, I cannot ...
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