The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W.H. Auden
Related Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog fro... W.H. AUDEN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES ... You are here again, so realistic, just, the golden dawn takes you away ZORICA SAVRON SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm ... VERA NAZARIAN Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ... THOMAS HARRIS Let us arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree and live the true blue simple life o... LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Charlotte, Will’s being vexing.' 'And the sun has come up in the east,' said Jem, t... CASSANDRA CLARE For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moo... W.B. YEATS Nothing is lost yet, nothing broken, and yet the cold blue word is spoken: say goodbye now to ... R.P.T. (ROBERT PETER TRISTRAM) COFFIN You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the LEO TOLSTOY Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are fluttering low: Square your shoulders, ... A.E. HOUSMAN Where has God gone?” [the madman asked] “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Autumn has come and reason has gone. Yesterday, I sold the sun for you and tonight... KAMAND KOJOURI There is nothing to become. The Truth shines here and now. Awareness IS. One does not become it. The... T.R. CORDóN Gaara: Can Sasuke come out to Die? Kakashi: Not Now. Gaara:............. Gaara: How ... MASASHI KISHIMOTO you left and i wanted you still yet i deserved someone who was willing to stay RUPI KAUR To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in ev... FERNANDO PESSOA I am the sun and moon and forever hungry the sharpened edge where day and night shall... AUDRE LORDE We have tears in our eyes As we wave our goodbyes, We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL a flower knows, when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will unders... SANOBER KHAN Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON Dad!" Jesus yelled. "Yes, son," God said. "That star's light just went out," Jesus told hi... ANTHONY T. HINCKS Sonnet LXXXI And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain ... PABLO NERUDA Don’t pack out ______________ To some people, you make life bright When you d... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON A bird sang sweet and strong In the top of the highest tree, He said, "I pour out my heart i... GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round a... SYLVIA PLATH The Moon And, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in ... PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do SOTONYE ANGA Don't ever give up. Don't ever give in. Don't ever stop trying. Don't ever sell ou... RICHELLE E. GOODRICH There were days when I still put on make up in case you’d come back, but I wear the sam... CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth ... PRABHAVANANDA Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea, And East and West the wanderlust that wil... GERALD GOULD Some days I wake up and all I feel are the fractures in the flesh that covers TYLER KNOTT GREGSON I want to hear one more of your stories Tangle up in your dreams, give up the fight ‘Pou... BECKY WICKS I've written you sixty-seven love poems. Here’s another one for you. But really, for me.... KAMAND KOJOURI Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; Look up a second time, and, one by one, ... WILLIAM WORDSWORTH love builds up the broken wall and straigtens the crooked path. love keeps the stars in the ... MAYA ANGELOU I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one b... CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Time is drowning, Hearts are burning, Heads are rolling, Nothing can save you now, EMORY R. FRIE ON THE DAY I DIE On the day I die, when I'm being carried toward the grave, don't we... RUMI Journey’s end In western lands beneath the Sun The flowers may rise in Spring, J.R.R. TOLKIEN Journey to the end of day, Come the fire-fly, Come the moon; Say a prayer for God'... CLIVE BARKER Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the ... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Who Goes With Fergus? Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's ... W.B. YEATS Farewell sweet earth and northern sky, for ever blest, since here did lie and here with li... J.R.R. TOLKIEN It doesn't bother me That less than brimming is my cup. Today is crowned with great success! ANON. The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all ... W.H. AUDEN The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As... BOB DYLAN Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand? Tonight when the stars come out and the m... VERA NAZARIAN The poet W.H. Auden wrote that people come in two varieties: Utopians, who imagine the perfect world... MARGARET MARK Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit... LOREN EISELEY The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don�... CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY W... JOHN GREEN I am starting to accept that you never loved me. And it's sad because I don't think y... SADE ANDRIA ZABALA HEARTWORK Each day is born with a sunrise and ends in a sunset, the same way we SUZY KASSEM I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew: Of wind I sang, a wind ther... J.R.R. TOLKIEN Nothing belongs to itself anymore. These trees are yours because you once looked at them. KAMAND KOJOURI I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they... ALBERTO CAEIRO Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York, And all the cl... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I look up. And I am surrounded by the universe. silence and stars A... BETH REVIS And who do you think you are sauntering along five feet up in the air, the ocean a blue f... MARY OLIVER God spreads the heavens above us like great wings And gives a little round of deeds and days, W.B. YEATS The girl looks out the window, watching the gentle, familiar blue sky fade into darkness. The stars ... AMIE KAUFMAN The human heart can go to the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter... CHRISTOPHER FRY Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning ... MARY OLIVER Reach for the stars. CHRISTA MCAULIFFE Your eyes are like heavy rain falling from pregnant clouds. With one glance, you washed ... KAMAND KOJOURI moon dust in your lungs stars in your eyes you are a child of the cosmos and ruler of... MEDUESA Oppression Now dreams Are not available To the dreamers, Nor songs To... LANGSTON HUGHES ENDURANCE I don't know you, But I love you, Just as God loves me and you. ... SUZY KASSEM The crown o' the earth doth melt. My lord! O, wither'd is the garland of the war, The sold... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to h... RENEE AHDIEH Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it." A feeling of warmt... RENEE AHDIEH Do you know why I adore roses?" Shahrzad untied the knot of his tikka sash with deliberate slowness.... RENEE AHDIEH Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice. "Not where I should have b... RENEE AHDIEH As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun. RENEE AHDIEH The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. When I'm insp... DOLLY PARTON Roads Go Ever On Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves wher... J.R.R. TOLKIEN One day the sun will shine brighter than ever, and the stars will twinkle and shine more than e... MEHAK BHALLA
Before Jerusalem
Now they've come before Jerusalem. Passions, avar... CONSTANTINOS P. CAVAFIS Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the S... CARL SAGAN but nothing I ever gave was good for you; it was like white bread to goldfish. they cram a... MARGARET ATWOOD ANY FOOL CAN GET INTO AN OCEAN BUT IT TAKES A GODDESS TO GET OUT OF ONE. JACK SPICER Avoid the temptation to force a moment so you won’t miss the one with your name on it. GINA GREENLEE So are we lost or do we know Which direction we should go Sit around and wait for someone ... LOST PROPHETS The present moment is always the most important. The present moment is the only one. MARTY RUBIN The present moment is always the most important. MARTY RUBIN Wake up naked drinking coffee Making plans to change the world While the world is changing... DAVE MATTHEWS Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast... JOHN DONNE If you’ve managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn’t care. But when Newton’s ap... ELLEN BASS The real world out there isn't nearly as nice as some people prefer it to be, so don't swallow every... DAVID EDDINGS There is no worse discriminator than envy. No worse traitor than envy. Even those who are seemingly ... C. JOYBELL C. The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul. RENEE AHDIEH Your flag and my flag,
And how it flies to-day
In your land and my land
And half a wo... WILBUR D. NESBIT But what would have been the good?" Aslan said nothing. "You mean," said Lucy rather fai... C.S. LEWIS Tis the witching hour of night, Or bed is the moon and bright, And the stars they glisten, g... JOHN KEATS The Coming of Wisdom with Time Though leaves are many, the root is one, Through all ... W.B. YEATS What will make you a star is in you SOTONYE ANGA Now is everything Now is the essence Now is the focus Focus on the now For that ... KAREN HACKEL
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 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 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