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Our researchers into Public Opinion are content/ That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;/ When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.


W. H. Auden

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He was dedicated to prayers for peace, and he was dedicated to working for peace.
LISA SCHIRCH But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the puni...
ANONYMOUS He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting...
JAMES T. FARRELL He looked at the viewscreen and couldn’t believe it. If the other ship were any closer, then it wo...
CHRISTINA ENGELA Nobel was a genuine friend of peace. He even went so far as to believe that he had invented a tool o...
ALVA MYRDAL My mother went into the Peace Corps when she was sixty-eight.
BILLY CARTER There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
NICOLAS CHAMFORT There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
SEBASTIAN ROCH NICOLAS CHAMFORT There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
SéBASTIEN-ROCH NICOLAS DE CHAMFORT Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a man of peace. He was a radical pacifist, and so he was against...
CORNEL WEST When it was time for a player to go, he went.
CAL HUBBARD When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Ti...
RICHARD GERE There was a time when he was thinking offense, offense, offense. Now he understands the value of def...
HOWIE DICKENMAN Freshman year, not too many people knew who he was until the Miami game, when he went 7 for 7.
JUSTIN TURNER When he went out there, he was just lights-out. It was the combination of his stuff and the fact tha...
BILL STONEMAN We want somebody the public recognizes when they walk into a restaurant. That doesn't mean that Paul...
CAROL ROBINSON That was normal public opinion, ... He was not abnormal.
BRUCE TYLER There was a definite Jekyll-and-Hyde effect there, ... and when he started to get into the meth, tha...
JOSEPH CARROLL President Sadat of Egypt made a historic breakthrough in 1977 when he put an end to war and convince...
YITZHAK RABIN Martin was really steadfast in who he was, both personally and professionally. That was a source of ...
ZACHARY SMITH He has never shown any weaknesses when he was in the public eye for negative reasons sometimes. When...
ARSENE WENGER It shouldn't have mattered, not when Miel and the other girls in his class wore jeans more than they...
ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was fo...
HAL HOLBROOK George told me that three years ago when he was in Cinema for Peace, he was called a traitor in Amer...
JAKA BIZILJ When he drove there, he went up to the house, spent 12, 13 minutes in the house when no one was home...
STEVE DIXON He was just a normal kid. He was a normal kid for his age. He was just starting to grow when he went...
CLIFFORD CHUBB He had just been to the school earlier, but I didn't know for sure when he was there. So I went ahea...
BRENT VINSON There was a mixture there and it was a rather pleasant mixture, and I think it helped him a lot in t...
MICHAEL PALIN He was dialed in and he was very sharp for this time of the year.
MATT NOSACK He was one of the guys ... there was this perfect communication with him. When I heard he was gettin...
BOB GOLIC I lost track of day and night too. My time was divided into Dimitri and not-Dimitri. He was my world...
RICHELLE MEAD To be quite honest, John Lennon had questionable politics. There was a flip side. He was all peace a...
NOEL GALLAGHER Mark played very, very well. He came in and got his goal. I was very pleased for him. He was here la...
COLIN CLARKE He was in there supporting the lads, he was as happy as anyone afterwards and when he is back he wil...
FRANK LAMPARD So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time t...
EDWARD DAHLBERG Coach Carroll personally told me that he was going to sign an extension at the end of the year; he p...
ASHLEY WALKER I thought he was solid all night. He didn't have a lot of shots for two periods, but when they did, ...
JOEY MULLEN He had an effective removal order against him, he had a legal deportation order against him, there w...
JANIS FERGUSSON Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of...
MICHAEL MOORCOCK There never was a good war or a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN There was never a good war or a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN There never was a good war nor a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The rules only applied to
people who couldn’t afford different rules.
CAMERON STRACHER He didn't run for four months and when he got onto the paddock and ran he was very concerned because...
DANIEL ANDERSON There was a time when a man was so convinced that the world was round that he was determined to prov...
ERNEST HOLMES That show was great. He was up there in his traditional black garb and when he said his opening line...
JOHN PICANO I think the first part of the season, he was new to the league and he was feeling his responsibiliti...
BUDDY BAILEY dressed the way he would be when he was selling real estate, when he was the manager of a farm co-op...
MICHAEL TIGAR Ralph Reed is deeply ambitious and always was so. There was a time when he... in one of my interview...
NINA EASTON Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain on...
THOMAS WOLFE When I needed him in spots, he was there for me.
COREY NAKATANI He longed for cleanliness and tidiness: it was hard to find peace in the middle of disorder.
ROBIN HOBB He walked out the bloody door and was never around. I'd admire him on TV -- listen to his words and ...
JULIAN LENNON Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked...
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the lan...
VOLTAIRE He has probably been a little bit sharper this year. But his velocity was there when he needed it, h...
JOE MADDON I could tell the whole day there was something off about him. When he walked in, he wouldn't take hi...
JULIA JACOB That was neat. I was surprised. I'm very proud of what he's doing for our country. He was a member o...
KARL DORRELL My dad was sentenced to double life, way before when there was no eligibility for early parole. He k...
JEFF POWER No more blood must run, ... There is a time for war. There is also a time for peace.
JOSEPH KABILA When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my conve...
REGGIE JACKSON When my son left Sunnyside he was on fire. The first day he went to public school he wanted to do it...
ELLA RIOS I told him that I love him, that he was going to be in peace, that his mother was waiting for him,
DANA JOHNSON I think he was always there for us. If you ever wanted support, he was there to give you the support...
GARY BELL In my opinion, there was not a more feared hitter in baseball. When he walked to the plate and stare...
WADE BOGGS When I met him, he was in full shackles and manacles. There was a camera there recording our meeting...
ANTHONY RICCO When Thorpe pulled out and he (Monk) went into those two (races), he was thrust into the limelight a...
ALAN THOMPSON He came into our locker room that first time, and everybody was just kind of sitting there. The firs...
JACOB BURTSCHI He was the muscle for Ryan. If we needed a big pick, he would do that, but Ryan was our show and he ...
DAVE MAGLEY When he was around, man, you knew he was there. That was tough . . . I miss him a lot.
DALE EARNHARDT JR Even when he was in Iraq fighting a war, he was always smiling,
ANTHONY MARTINEZ Men may yearn for peace, cry for peace, and work for peace, but there will be no peace until they fo...
DAVID O. MCKAY He told me he was truly sorry. We talked for about 20 minutes, just us. It was weird how he just hel...
LARRY RODRIGUEZ When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of ...
BOB EDWARDS When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of ...
BOB EDWARDS Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of...
JOSEPH HELLER For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afrai...
HUBERT SELBY JR. George W. Bush has not been there even though he is the governor of Texas. When Sen. Lieberman goes ...
JOE ANDREW He was almost there, when...Smash! Crash! Bash! He slid down and mashed into engine hash the little ...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN There never was a good war, or a bad peace. -Benjamin Franklin.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN He said, “McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity f...
BARBARA W. TUCHMAN There was lots of emotion last night. At the same time, there was a kind of peace this morning.
BROTHER EMILE He had become something of a tragic figure even before these stories hit the headlines. But it was t...
ANDREW MALE When a man was alone too much, he had only himself to look into, and what he found there was all man...
HOWARD BAHR He was a soldier of justice, which is indispensable to our freedom, stability and peace.
TERRY DAVIS as in earlier mediation, including peace-making efforts when he was the state's attorney general, Ko...
CHARLES TURNER When Lofton came into the dugout, he said it was hard to see anything that had any kind of break to ...
BRETT MYERS There was no way I could let Mark Martin get outside of me on that restart. My truck was so loose wh...
TODD BODINE It was messy, but he finished the game. There were moments when he was throwing the ball very well a...
CHAMP ATLEE My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven...
HOWARD SCHULTZ In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, Òone when he was a boy and one ...
MARK TWAIN Traditionally Presidents Day was Washington's birthday. It was celebrated as a public holiday on...
NIGEL HAMILTON That's why he was in there. When the ball went up, I knew it would fall incomplete or he would pick ...
WENDELL EARLY For the longest time, I was Scott Ruffalo's brother. I mean, he was the mayor of Beverly Hills. ...
MARK RUFFALO There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would...
GEORGE MACDONALD I went over the other side of the pit, climbed the fence to make sure he was going through there, bu...
KURT CLARK There was one kid, he said he watched us the last couple of years and he really went into depth abou...
LEWIS THORPE When he was there, I had a great season. Obviously, he's entitled to his opinion. He's very well-acc...
MICHAEL OLOWOKANDI In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and again...
YOKO ONO

More W. H. Auden

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.
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Par...
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. AUDEN We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W H AUDEN A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
W. H. AUDEN Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and...
W. H. AUDEN Eagerly, musician,Sweep your string,So we may sing,Elated, optative,Our several voicesInterblending,...
W. H. AUDEN The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the oth...
W. H. AUDEN You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.
W. H. AUDEN We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W. H. AUDEN You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a s...
W. H. AUDEN When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mist...
W. H. AUDEN In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it b...
W. H. AUDEN A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A c...
W. H. AUDEN Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinkin...
W. H. AUDEN Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of charac...
W. H. AUDEN It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say,...
W. H. AUDEN Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life ...
W. H. AUDEN Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are sha...
W. H. AUDEN A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. AUDEN Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who cl...
W. H. AUDEN To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrat...
W. H. AUDEN There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them...
W. H. AUDEN The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a s...
W. H. AUDEN My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible...
W. H. AUDEN Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am fr...
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. AUDEN It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which...
W. H. AUDEN Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'l...
W. H. AUDEN Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. AUDEN Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. ...
W. H. AUDEN We must love one another or die.
W. H. AUDEN We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country becaus...
W. H. AUDEN A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. AUDEN In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for...
W. H. AUDEN A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich ma...
W. H. AUDEN The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
W. H. AUDEN What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercours...
W. H. AUDEN Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefe...
W. H. AUDEN The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life...
W. H. AUDEN How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so hig...
W. H. AUDEN Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a f...
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in...
W. H. AUDEN To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual s...
W. H. AUDEN Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. AUDEN Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willful...
W. H. AUDEN The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when ...
W. H. AUDEN A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. AUDEN Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of...
W. H. AUDEN It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself...
W. H. AUDEN A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scien...
W. H. AUDEN Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their trivial...
W. H. AUDEN God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of ho...
W. H. AUDEN Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to...
W. H. AUDEN No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. AUDEN Funeral Blues


W. H. AUDEN Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so con...
W. H. AUDEN One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. AUDEN Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.
W. H. AUDEN And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to ...
W. H. AUDEN Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th...
W. H. AUDEN All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular c...
W. H. AUDEN It is... axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people b...
W. H. AUDEN Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. AUDEN May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, consideri...
W. H. AUDEN My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. AUDEN Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would cal...
W. H. AUDEN Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, ...
W. H. AUDEN 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 He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, ...
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
W. H. AUDEN To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. AUDEN No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN False enchantment can last a lifetime.
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffoc...
W. H. AUDEN Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores
W. H. AUDEN 'Healing,'' Papa would tell me, ''is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AUDEN Embrace me, belly, like a bride.
W. H. AUDEN Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession
W. H. AUDEN O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges / To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma.
W. H. AUDEN I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of ...
W. H. AUDEN It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction ...
W. H. AUDEN The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago /...
W. H. AUDEN The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very dif...
W. H. AUDEN If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. AUDEN If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don't raise your hands because I am a...
W. H. AUDEN Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. AUDEN Look, stranger, at this island now / The leaping light for your delight discovers.
W. H. AUDEN Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their conscience...
W. H. AUDEN Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in ...
W. H. AUDEN Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good
W. H. AUDEN lay your faithless head upon my arm
W. H. AUDEN Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen
W. H. AUDEN I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain ...
W. H. AUDEN Hunger allows no choice, To the citizens or the police; We must love one another or die
W. H. AUDEN Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN Five minutes on even the nicest mountain / Is awfully long.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the oth...
W. H. AUDEN 'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.
W. H. AUDEN Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy
W. H. AUDEN A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scien...
W. H. AUDEN But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely be...
W. H. AUDEN Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''s...
W. H. AUDEN All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation
W. H. AUDEN If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep
W. H. AUDEN No hero is immortal till he dies
W. H. AUDEN Let mortals beware of wordsFor with words we lieCan speak peaceWhen we mean warBut song is trueLet m...
W. H. AUDEN A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a ...
W. H. AUDEN All that we are not stares back at what we are
W. H. AUDEN . . . see without looking, . . . hear without listening, . . . breathe without asking.
W. H. AUDEN Private faces in public places / Are wiser and nicer / Than public faces in private places.
W. H. AUDEN Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find it...
W. H. AUDEN Though I believe it sinful to be queer, it has at least saved me from becoming a pillar of the estab...
W. H. AUDEN Within these breakwaters English is spoken; without / Is the immense, improbable atlas.
W. H. AUDEN 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