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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.


W. H. Auden

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It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about ...
W. H. AUDEN I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a litt...
J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER 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 Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do t...
JOHN BERGER Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN You can tell more about a person by how he spends his money and time.
VIKRANT PARSAI By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you ...
RICHARD RUSSO In our culture, talking about sex is embarrassing, and talking about diseases that come from sex is ...
JULIE DOWNS What impressed me about Peter is that although he was a poet himself, he reviewed poetry for the lov...
IRENE CLURMAN What if it becomes less about how we look and more about how much we care? What if it becomes less a...
AMY LEIGH MERCREE An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAU We're not 'losing' the money we're talking about. That money stays in the community, in the pockets ...
DON SCHMIDT A pair of freshmen rushed by our door talking about who would make a better Gallagher Girl: Buffy th...
ALLY CARTER We want people to experience art and think about it. The art reflects our time, it is about our cult...
DAVID ELLIOTT So that makes time more precious, doesn’t it? More precious than money, more precious than anythin...
CECELIA AHERN You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about ...
AUDREY HEPBURN You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about ...
LEO AIKMAN Spending money more than you can earn is spinning a rope around your own neck.
VIKRANT PARSAI The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or any...
MOLLY IVINS I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue. He's consumed by neither tactic...
DAVID AXELROD Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that ...
PHYLLIS THEROUX Fashion is part of our culture, and it's about more than just a pretty dress.
JOAN SMALLS You can earn more money and leave a better quality of life by self-education
SUNDAY ADELAJA I'm very American. I love our culture. I love the pieces, the most mundane stuff about our culture, ...
EXENE CERVENKA Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of ...
THOMAS CARLYLE Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of ...
THOMAS CARLYLE The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country's dazzli...
QUENTIN BRYCE Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the...
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our c...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The president is being very aggressive in talking about the economy. He talks about it a lot more th...
CLAIRE BUCHAN It is never about how much you earn. It is how much you spend relative to how much you earn that mat...
ZENG HAN JUN The fact that I am Latino is not a secret. There's not much I can do about that. It is what it i...
PETE GALLEGO Fireworks can make us both happy and sad. It just depends if we are talking about fireworks in the s...
ANTHONY T. HINCKS Pollock said several times that he couldn't separate himself from his art. Not knowing much about mo...
ED HARRIS I think it is important the communities are listened to and that their voice is heard, particularly ...
NICOLA STURGEON However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.
RAYMOND CHANDLER Maybe it's less about what we can do than about how much we can love. More about walking with others...
CINDEE SNIDER RE You can decry this as a crime against literature or accept it as the way of the world, but the fact ...
BOB THOMPSON Writing is such a solitary endeavor. It gets people interested in and talking about writing.
JAMIE BROWN Pollock said several times that he couldn't separate himself from his art. Not knowing much abou...
ED HARRIS It is not about money. It is about a player thinking he is bigger than this club.
FREDDY SHEPHERD I'd rather not get into what I'm talking about lyrically. I think it's impossible not to...
TRENT REZNOR I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER No one person knows much more about writing than another. I expect that when people think they know ...
WILLA SIBERT CATHER I enjoy talking about [the sport] more than I do talking about what most women my age like to talk a...
HOLLY ROBINSON-PEETE Brad's been waiting since January, and you can see it. There was no guy in our program more excited ...
GARY PINKEL A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these ...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its tim...
JERRY SALTZ It's been noted that writing about the production of art is a masquerade or metaphor for writing...
SARAH HALL The world is a slightly better place for having improvisation in it than it was before. There's ...
DEL CLOSE The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn�...
MITCH ALBOM The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.
KATHARINE WHITEHORN You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hat...
JEFF MELVOIN If you can dream it, you can do it.
ENZO FERRARI Do the thing and you will have the power.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON I believe that he is wiping his muddy shoes on the face of victims, using them as the doormat as he ...
KEVIN LYONS In fact, when his Holiness comes here, I can tell you his message will be not one of talking about s...
LODI GYARI You are an adult and you don't understand me and what are the differences between the adult and the ...
DEYTH BANGER We talked about his surgery last night, and he's not that bothered about it and to him the priority ...
GREG NORMAN I have a great respect for money. I know how hard it is to earn and keep, especially with our diabol...
SEAN CONNERY I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to ...
LARRY BIRD It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the mu...
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of...
GEORGES BERNANOS It really bothered me when the rangers started talking about what might have happened and about call...
JAMES PENFOLD The great rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.
KATHARINE WHITEHORN The great rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you
KATHARINE WHITEHORN When a single author uploading his own books to Amazon can earn more money than a large N.Y. publish...
J. A. KONRATH Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be dig...
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN Everyone has taste, yet it is more of a taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simp...
STEPHEN BAYLEY That was our top relay. There's not much else I can say about that other than it was disappointing.
PATTI HOCH The question is what is our solution? Ideally we can find some new technology that can take care of ...
TODD APO One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing abou...
JOHN PODHORETZ If you can say it... it's obvious.
DEYTH BANGER By art he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain.
Art can do mu...
ANNE DUDLEY BRADSTREET I find that the world is changing much, much faster than I can even bitch about it.
BILL MAHER It ends or it doesn't.
That’s what you say. That’s
how you get through it.
The tu...
CAITLYN SIEHL More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value ...
JOHN BURROUGHS There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page...
TERRY PRATCHETT I can't pretend that I'm a great student of the art of comedy because anybody that becomes p...
JACKIE MASON Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It.
WARREN FARRELL Bound by custom or unique by choice.
MARGARET MCHEYZER In the East, fames are won.
In the west, deeds are done.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON The consolation of an imaginary thing is still a real consolation.
ROGER SCRUTON When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself,
he is very careful about how much ...
MILTON FRIEDMAN Respect is like money, it can be made in many ways, although respect is more valuable and harder to ...
MICHAEL CHAD BUTCHER Until film is just as easily accessible as a pen or pencil, then it's not completely an art form...
FOREST WHITAKER Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me w...
TERRY BROOKS I thought he was very much interested in talking about his problems rather than the problems of the ...
COLIN WOOD Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems espec...
ATUL GAWANDE We women don't care too much about getting our pictures on money as long as we can get our hands on ...
IVY BAKER PRIEST When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself,he is very careful about how much he sp...
MILTON FRIEDMAN The Madden Curse has really taken on a life of its own. People just love talking about it, and it is...
DREW BREES It was a sad feeling. I wasn't thinking about it too much, but it is sad. This is a great place to p...
ASHLEY BAKER One by one, we can contribute to a growing national dialogue about personal values and civic ideals....
LARRY VANDERHOEF I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me...
LARRY BIRD Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was ...
STEVE BALLMER What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so...
FRED ROGERS I don't know if he can do it or not. It was a violent tackle on his knee and he has a problem with h...
JOSE MOURINHO

More W. H. Auden

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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...
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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...
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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 Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.
W. H. AUDEN Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their aff...
W. H. AUDEN As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption....
W. H. AUDEN You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
W. H. AUDEN Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a m...
W. H. AUDEN A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good ...
W. H. AUDEN But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided.
A continent for better or worse divided. W. H. AUDEN If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all ...
W. H. AUDEN Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...
W. H. AUDEN No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the ...
W. H. AUDEN The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father h...
W. H. AUDEN God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W. H. AUDEN The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in ...
W. H. AUDEN The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most pa...
W. H. AUDEN Criticism should be a casual conversation.
W. H. AUDEN All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will...
W. H. AUDEN Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the ot...
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W H AUDEN It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in whi...
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
W. H. AUDEN One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. AUDEN A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
W. H. AUDEN All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. AUDEN I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the m...
W. H. AUDEN We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
W. H. AUDEN We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. AUDEN A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. AUDEN The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as...
W. H. AUDEN History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology ...
W. H. AUDEN When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into ...
W. H. AUDEN He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, ...
W. H. AUDEN Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Pa...
W. H. AUDEN To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. AUDEN No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN False enchantment can last a lifetime.
W. H. AUDEN Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AUDEN When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffoc...
W. H. AUDEN Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores
W. H. AUDEN 'Healing,'' Papa would tell me, ''is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AUDEN Embrace me, belly, like a bride.
W. H. AUDEN Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession
W. H. AUDEN O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges / To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma.
W. H. AUDEN I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of ...
W. H. AUDEN It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction ...
W. H. AUDEN The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago /...
W. H. AUDEN The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very dif...
W. H. AUDEN If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. AUDEN If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don't raise your hands because I am a...
W. H. AUDEN Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. AUDEN Look, stranger, at this island now / The leaping light for your delight discovers.
W. H. AUDEN Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their conscience...
W. H. AUDEN Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in ...
W. H. AUDEN Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good
W. H. AUDEN lay your faithless head upon my arm
W. H. AUDEN Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen
W. H. AUDEN I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain ...
W. H. AUDEN Hunger allows no choice, To the citizens or the police; We must love one another or die
W. H. AUDEN Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I ...
W. H. AUDEN Five minutes on even the nicest mountain / Is awfully long.
W. H. AUDEN The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the oth...
W. H. AUDEN 'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.
W. H. AUDEN Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy
W. H. AUDEN A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scien...
W. H. AUDEN But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely be...
W. H. AUDEN Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''s...
W. H. AUDEN All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation
W. H. AUDEN If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me
W. H. AUDEN A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep
W. H. AUDEN No hero is immortal till he dies
W. H. AUDEN Let mortals beware of wordsFor with words we lieCan speak peaceWhen we mean warBut song is trueLet m...
W. H. AUDEN A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a ...
W. H. AUDEN All that we are not stares back at what we are
W. H. AUDEN . . . see without looking, . . . hear without listening, . . . breathe without asking.
W. H. AUDEN Private faces in public places / Are wiser and nicer / Than public faces in private places.
W. H. AUDEN Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find it...
W. H. AUDEN Though I believe it sinful to be queer, it has at least saved me from becoming a pillar of the estab...
W. H. AUDEN Within these breakwaters English is spoken; without / Is the immense, improbable atlas.
W. H. AUDEN 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