FastSaying

. . . see without looking, . . . hear without listening, . . . breathe without asking.


W. H. Auden

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I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a litt...
J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN As an adult I had mastered the art of looking without seeing and listening without hearing and eatin...
DAN GROAT God created you without asking, he will take your life away without asking, he will save you without...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Prayer without faith is as futile as a body without breathe.
ROBIN BERTRAM After managing to resolve an impasse in the food insecurity situation, the United Nations should tak...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS Yu's physical and psychological state demonstrates the full atrocity of the Chinese prison system, w...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS We are very concerned at where this crackdown could lead, because it is gaining pace in the run-up t...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS This murder once again shows that journalists pay a very high price to report in Iraq. It is absolut...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS We fear this 'obstruction of justice' procedure is a judicial device for the government to yet again...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS This imprisonment is shameful for a country like Poland, which has just joined the European Union an...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS The firm [Yahoo!] says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever kno...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS Now we know Yahoo works regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police.
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS The supreme court stirred up trouble with its recent decision supporting a government ordinance crac...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS If nothing is done to ensure the press is free to do its work, these elections will take place in a ...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS Any prison sentence for an offence of opinion is unacceptable, even in cases of insult or defamation...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS The judicial authorities are imposing a grim ordeal on three journalists under pressure from the gov...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS It's like turning Anne Frank over to the Nazis.
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS The charges of high treason and genocide are extremely grave as regards the journalists. We call on ...
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS 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 Without acting I cannot breathe.
LAURENCE OLIVIER, SIR Without acting I cannot breathe.
LAURENCE OLIVIER SIR Looking but not Seeing, Listening but not Hearing, Touching but not Feeling, Tasting but not Savorin...
P. A. MONSON People talking without speaking,/ People listening without hearing,/ People writing songs that voice...
PAUL SIMON Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification; and as without this, without holiness, no man shall ...
JOHN DONNE Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no ...
HENRI NOUWEN Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no ...
HENRI NOUWEN Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.
JOHN KEATS Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe.
DAVID SARNOFF In a world without air all you breathe is adventure!
HELEN DUNMORE You honestly expect me to breathe in a world without air?
RENEE AHDIEH (Almost) nobody loves you without at least a tiny bit of personal agenda. Respect to those who can l...
MARIANA FULGER I can spend the day without writing or reading, but I can't spend a day without listening to mus...
ERIC-EMMANUEL SCHMITT "Sometimes life gets in the way, we fail to recognize what great friends we have, until they come to...
TOM BAKER AKA THE PONDERING MAN ...you want the sweetness of our beginning without the bitterness of our struggle - what are you ask...
JOHN GEDDES for the equivalent of a listening tour, without labeling it as such.
LEE MIRINGOFF Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and...
ALEXANDRE DUMAS Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see...
LAO TZU Without stirring abroad, one can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window one can see...
LAO-TZU After a few years of marriage a man can look right at a woman without seeing her and a woman can see...
HELEN ROWLAND Sometimes the hardest part of existing without your loved ones was remembering how to breathe.
BRITTAINY C. CHERRY If birds sing without worrying about who is listening to them, and monkeys dance without worrying ab...
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO The real blessings come without our asking or even knowing what they are.
MARTY RUBIN It was fantastic to see how they did without having those guys around. Our kids are looking good.
JEFF KRUMLAUF Ghandi's seven sins:Wealth without workPleasure without conscienceKnowledge without characterCommerc...
MAHATMA GHANDI Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS The danger is being so sure of someone else's reasoning without ever asking them.
DR. JENNIFER PICINIC The practice of deep listening is the practice of open inquiry, without assumption or judgement.
SHARON WEIL The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear.
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear
LYNDON B. JOHNSON The nose of the Bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go
WINSTON CHURCHILL While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMAN He made me love him without looking at me.
CHARLOTTE BRONTë We would be a lesser place without the H-1Bs, and the benefits to our patients would be lesser in th...
BRUCE LARSON Seven sins of life: Politics without principle. Commerce without morality. Wealth without work. Educ...
MAHATMA GANDHI The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character...
MAHATMA GANDHI A world without God is a world without fear, without law, without order, without hope.
NORM TOMLINSON Without the standard chips, they wouldn't be able to expand their market outside of their two bigges...
WILL STRAUSS After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without l...
HELEN ROWLAND When you smile from within good things come to you from without. Just breathe, your music will come.
LISA FANTINO I love him, but if he doesn't show that he loves me, I will move on with my life without him, even i...
VICTORIA ANGULO Creation is a drug I can't do without.
CECIL B. DEMILLE You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around ...
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.
PAUL ENGLE “The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without charac...
MAHATMA GANDHI There's a tradition in politics of asking young people for their votes and time without asking peopl...
JOSH GREEN Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, free without indecency,...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecenc...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecenc...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Love is not... ~ Words, without action ~ Action, without intent ~ Intent, without heart ~ Heart, wit...
BETHANY SAXTON Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS To take every one of them and without asking, we were more than a little heartbroken.
VERENA WIELOCH She was furious with him and couldn't believe he would take the car without asking her.
SHARON ANDERSON Listening to some Oscar winners acceptance speeches can be like seeing them in high definition witho...
GREG GAZIN One day you will kiss a man you can't breathe without, and find that breath is of little consequence...
KAREN MARIE MONING Water is such a lifesaver into which we cannot breathe but without taking it into us we cannot live
MUNIA KHAN A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE To be able to listen -- really, wholly passively, self-effacingly listen -- without presupposing, cl...
ABRAHAM H. MASLOW I told myself that some families we get without asking, while others we choose.
And I chose th...
JENNY VALENTINE Ghandi's seven sins:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without c...
MAHATMA GHANDI So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without ca...
URSULA K. LE GUIN These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, w...
ANTHONY DE MELLO These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, w...
ANTHONY MELLO These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, w...
ANTHONY DE MELLO God comes to see without a bell.
GEORGE HERBERT I don’t see the point in caffeine without coffee. Or coffee without caffeine, for that matter,” ...
ROBYN SCHNEIDER Be aware of yourself without thinking or looking in the mirror
BERT MCCOY Without conditions is a key phrase that we've been looking for,
MELISSA FLEMING We are always looking for someone without a movie to plug,
ROB BURNETT Investors bought telecom stocks without asking difficult questions about where the data market was g...
JOE LOCKE Breathe in, breathe out. Without the fire, the phoenix never rises from the ashes. Let the fire scor...
FORREST CURRAN It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script appr...
BAHMAN GHOBADI Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
'Ride,' Pleasure said;
'Walk,' Joy replied.
W.H. DAVIES You'll see me in the morning
if you do not flood the street.
You'll hear me in the evenin...
CALVIN W. ALLISON Those without wisdom can see as well as a blind man those without wisdom think as much as a madman.
BRANDON WILLIAM PETER LUISI A land without ruins is a land without memoriesa land without memories is a land without history.
ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN Accomplish but do not boast, accomplish without show, accomplish without arrogance, accomplish witho...
LAO TZU Feelin' faded without the faders, Darth without the Vaders. Brought back to earth when I hear that n...
DEDRICK D. L. PITTER

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 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 Our researchers into Public Opinion are content/ That he held the proper opinions for the time of ye...
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