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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.


W.H. Auden

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More 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 If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
W.H. AUDEN To make one, there must be two.
W.H. AUDEN The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W.H. AUDEN A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish...
W.H. AUDEN And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can be...
W.H. AUDEN Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W.H. AUDEN Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
W.H. AUDEN Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The realit...
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 Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shad...
W.H. AUDEN Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog fro...
W.H. AUDEN Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th...
W.H. AUDEN Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future...
W.H. AUDEN For poetry makes nothing happen.
W.H. AUDEN What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed li...
W.H. AUDEN Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all o...
W.H. AUDEN I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W.H. AUDEN The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
T...
W.H. AUDEN A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W.H. AUDEN In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W.H. AUDEN Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th...
W.H. AUDEN The friends who met here and embraced are gone,
Each to his own mistake;
W.H. AUDEN Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.
W.H. AUDEN The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
W.H. AUDEN Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble ...
W.H. AUDEN Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
W.H. AUDEN He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, ...
W.H. AUDEN No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the o...
W.H. AUDEN Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false...
W.H. AUDEN Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book rea...
W.H. AUDEN I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps ov...
W.H. AUDEN A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W.H. AUDEN Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W.H. AUDEN SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain an...
W.H. AUDEN The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all ...
W.H. AUDEN The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
P...
W.H. AUDEN Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W.H. AUDEN In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) ...
W.H. AUDEN We must love one another or die
W.H. AUDEN Thoughts on his own death, like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic.
W.H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep
W.H. AUDEN There are good books which are only for adults.
There are no good books which are only for chil...
W.H. AUDEN What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced socie...
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 There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sl...
W.H. AUDEN You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eye...
W.H. AUDEN In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
W.H. AUDEN What is this life so full of care,
We don't have time to stand and stare.
W.H. DAVIES What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand ...
W.H. DAVIES Concerning all acts of iniative and creation, there is one elementary truth- that the moment one def...
W.H. MURRAY Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
'Ride,' Pleasure said;
'Walk,' Joy replied.
W.H. DAVIES No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No ti...
W.H. DAVIES I love thee for a heart that’s kind--not for the knowledge in thy mind.
W.H. DAVIES This man has talent, that man genius
And here's the strange and cruel difference:
Talent g...
W.H. DAVIES Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and star...
W.H. DAVIES What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
W.H. DAVIES The thing has way more value in inspiration than in clean-energy production.
AUDEN SCHENDLER The most important thing we could do at X Games is reach this generation with a message about climat...
AUDEN SCHENDLER Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I...
WH AUDEN Our whole environmental program is organized under the umbrella of climate. Climate change should be...
AUDEN SCHENDLER Some companies (buying insurance) may be stunned by how much rates will go up.
JAMES 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