The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
Wystan Hugh Auden
Related The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as... W. H. AUDEN Those who suffer are not those at the top, but are the less privileged members of society. BIANCA JAGGER What I said was that in a democratic society, people must be permitted to make their choices and tha... DENNIS KUCINICH We are an open and democratic society that makes no distinctions and shuts no one out. GIORGOS VOULGARAKIS Remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fe... MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN Those who are ignorant of history and the evolution of taste are apt at every turn to make the prese... ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER III As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races, or classes, ... ELIZABETH FEE How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine." The Q... LEWIS CARROLL PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL NATALIE URQUIETA 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give... JAMES C. DOBSON To be or not to be that is the question. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in al... CLARA ZETKIN Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democrat... ABERJHANI Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi... MARIANA FULGER I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib... C. JOYBELL C. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue at the state board. We are completely united in our req... GAIL LOWE We are far from perfect but willing to be different. CRAIG GROESCHEL 2. Overcommitment and time pressure are the greatest destroyers of marriages. It takes time to devel... JAMES C. DOBSON in what society is killing babies permitted, but guns are not? This is the hypocrisy of the Democrat... TIMOTHY M. DEETER The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Mundane humans create distinctions between themselves, distinctions that seem ridiculous to any Shad... CASSANDRA CLARE People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they ar... JANE PORTER Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, nei... HENRIK IBSEN Class action reform has a tendency to make class actions less desirable, and the class action device... BENJAMIN ZIPURSKY And these vicissitudes come best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt... LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON) A tiny little baby!' says Tam. 'People look at me like I'm an animal. People who don't know me judge... JON RONSON Still, corruption and oppression are far too common threats to the democratic society. ANNA LINDH Cancer cells are fixed at an age where they are still too young to have learned the rules of the soc... SHERWIN B. NULAND Rank and riches are chains of gold, but still chains. GIOVANNI RUFFINI Rank and riches are chains of gold, but still chains GIOVANNI RUFFINI This is a rainbow of arts, activism, race, gender, age and class. KATE BORNSTEIN Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed! I ARE To be, or not to be, that is the question. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE One final burst is still to happen before the market cools off. But the fall may not be steep, as a ... DEEPAK JASANI I don't know if I have a favorite color. KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl. KATE MIDDLETON The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democr... FRIEDRICH ENGELS The state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another--no less so in a democr... FRIEDRICH ENGELS Civilization is not a spontaneous generation with any race or nation known to history, but the torch... KELLY MILLER The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age. ORSON WELLES As far back as history records people thinking, thinking people
have been befuddled by the mysteries... LEWIS N. ROE We're not out of it yet. Things are tight at the top and anything can happen in the slalom. We're go... GEORGE BROOKS Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Aliens have been here for millennium. But they didn't come in spaceships. They came in orange s... ANTHONY T. HINCKS These are not struggles to get power, these are not struggles to control the capital. These are stru... BIZIMA KARAHA When one attains self-knowledge, distinctions of race and religion vanish. ABHIJIT NASKAR Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ... THOMAS HARRIS Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the d... WILLIAM HAZLITT When a judge assumes the power to decide which distinctions made in a statute are legitimate and whi... ROBERT BORK We, as part of a democratic opposition movement, are not planning to kill Chavez or topple the gover... HENRY RAMOS The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of ... WARDER C. ALLEE Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently d... HAILE SELASSIE Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently d... HAILE SELASSIE I OF ETHIOPIA Kant’s conception of dignity is indebted to Cicero and the Roman conception of dignitas, according... OLIVER SENSEN The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. W.E.B. DU BOIS Being a part of a large family is just like a little society: those who fight to the top of the heap... OCTAVIA SPENCER When judges are given flexibility to consider the full merits of each case, they are likely to impos... MARC MAUER As far as me getting signed at my age, the chances are less than zero. But if you've got any kind of... LARRY POTTS There is no class of people so hard to manage in a state, as those whose intentions are honest, but ... NAPOLEON BONAPARTE Those who are born of parents broken with old age, or of such as are not yet ripe or are too young, ... THOMAS WILLIS Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think... ANN COULTER You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part. HENRY JAMES Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it. POPE JOHN PAUL II Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on... POPE JOHN PAUL II Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry a... POPE JOHN PAUL II Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimate... POPE JOHN PAUL II I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly moth... POPE JOHN PAUL II The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a pro... POPE JOHN PAUL II From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can ... POPE JOHN PAUL II Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. POPE JOHN PAUL II An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded. POPE JOHN PAUL II Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it. POPE JOHN PAUL II The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and ... POPE JOHN PAUL II Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, on... POPE JOHN PAUL II Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressi... POPE JOHN PAUL II The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not d... POPE JOHN PAUL II To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the... POPE JOHN PAUL II Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural ... POPE JOHN PAUL II When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law e... POPE JOHN PAUL II You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day t... POPE JOHN PAUL II The future starts today, not tomorrow. POPE JOHN PAUL II The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels ... POPE JOHN PAUL II Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create. POPE JOHN PAUL II Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and b... POPE JOHN PAUL II The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to re... POPE JOHN PAUL II Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men. POPE JOHN PAUL II Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, ther... POPE JOHN PAUL II There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you... POPE JOHN PAUL II I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin. POPE JOHN PAUL II The children of God are not to be afraid of any government official or chief of any rank SUNDAY ADELAJA This is a Democratic state, but all voters are fed up. As voters begin to focus on the race, they're... SHERRY SYLVESTER His words even imply that philanthropy has deeper depths than is generally realized. The great emoti... FULTON J. SHEEN A free economy is as essential to society as democratic political institutions. A strong market-base... LEE R. RAYMOND No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is... BERNARD BARTON Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day. CRAIG GROESCHEL To be or not to be. That's not really a question. JEAN-LUC GODARD ...The men of those days...were absolutely not the same people that we are now; it was not the same ... FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY No sex, age, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one va... BRUCE BARTON Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal ANDREW FAIRCHILD But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away,... SARAH ADDISON ALLEN
More Wystan Hugh Auden
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a f... WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, th... WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father h... WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich. WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud. WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet dev... WYSTAN HUGH 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 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 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 or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I... WH 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 Our whole environmental program is organized under the umbrella of climate. Climate change should be... AUDEN SCHENDLER 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 The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not ... 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 Some companies (buying insurance) may be stunned by how much rates will go up. JAMES 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 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