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Marriage Is Rarely Bliss But, Surely It Would Be Worse As Particles To Pelt At Thousands Of Miles Per Sec About A Universe In Which A Lover's Kiss Would Either Not Be Felt Or Break The Loved One's Neck.

-W. H. Auden

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Marriage Is Rarely Bliss

W. H. Auden

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Marriage Is Rarely Bliss But, Surely It Would Be Worse As Particles To Pelt At Thousands Of Miles Per Sec About A Universe In Which A Lover's Kiss Would Either Not Be Felt Or Break The Loved One's Neck.

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One Rational Voice Is Dumb: Over A Grave The Household Of Impulse Mourns One Dearly Loved. Sad Is Eros, Builder Of Cities, And Weeping Anarchic Aphrodite.

Marriage Is Rarely Bliss But, Surely It Would Be Worse As Particles To Pelt At Thousands Of Miles Per Sec About A Universe In Which A Lover's Kiss Would Either Not Be Felt Or Break The Loved One's Neck.

A Dead Man Who Never Caused Others To Die Seldom Rates A Statue.

The Law Cannot Forgive, For The Law Has Not Been Wronged, Only Broken; Only Persons Can Be Wronged. The Law Can Pardon, But It Can Only Pardon What It Has The Power To Punish.

The Masculine Imagination Lives In A State Of Perpetual Revolt Against The Limitations Of Human Life. In Theological Terms, One Might Say That All Men, Left To Themselves, Become Gnostics. They May Swagger Like Peacocks, But In Their Heart Of Hearts They All Think Sex An Indignity And Wish They Could Beget Themselves On Themselves. Hence The Aggressive Hostility Toward Women So Manifest In Most Club-car Stories.

Nobody Knows What The Cause Is, Though Some Pretend They Do; It Like Some Hidden Assassin Waiting To Strike At You. Childless Women Get It, And Men When They Retire; It As If There Had To Be Some Outlet For Their Foiled Creative Fire.

No Hero Is Mortal Till He Dies.

Hunger Allows No Choice.

As I Walked Out One Evening, Walking Down Bristol Street, The Crowds Upon The Pavement Were Fields Of Harvest Wheat. And Down By The Brimming River I Heard A Lover Sing Under An Arch Of The Railway: 'love Has No Ending. 'i'll Love You, Dear, I'll Love You Till China And Africa Meet, And The River Jumps Over The Mountain And The Salmon Sing In The Street, 'i'll Love You Till The Ocean Is Folded And Hung Up To Dry And The Seven Stars Go Squawking Like Geese About The Sky.

The Lights Must Never Go Out, The Music Must Always Play

The Primary Function Of Poetry, As Of All The Arts, Is To Make Us More Aware Of Ourselves And The World Around Us. I Do Not Know If Such Increased Awareness Makes Us More Moral Or More Efficient. I Hope Not. I Think It Makes Us More Human, And I Am Quite Certain It Makes Us More Difficult To Deceive.

There's Only One Good Test Of Pornography. Get Twelve Normal Men To Read The Book, And Then Ask Them, ''did You Get An Erection?'' If The Answer Is ''yes'' From A Majority Of The Twelve, Then The Book Is Pornographic.

One Cannot Walk Through An Assembly Factory And Not Feel That One Is In Hell.

Like Everything Which Is Not The Involuntary Result Of Fleeting Emotion But The Creation Of Time And Will, Any Marriage, Happy Or Unhappy, Is Infinitely More Interesting Than Any Romance, However Passionate.

Poetry Might Be Defined As The Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake. I Think Someone Is My Friend When He Really Is My Enemy, That I Am Free To Marry A Woman When In Fact She Is My Mother, That This Person Is A Chambermaid When It Is A Young Nobleman In Disguise, That This Well-dressed Young Man Is Rich When He Is Really A Penniless Adventurer, Or That If I Do This Such And Such A Result Will Follow When In Fact It Results In Something Very Different. All Good Drama Has Two Movements, First The Making Of The Mistake, Then The Discovery That It Was A Mistake.

Defenceless Under The Night Our World In Stupor Lies; Yet, Dotted Everywhere, Ironic Points Of Light Flash Out Wherever The Just Exchange Their Messages: May I, Composed Like Them Of Eros And Of Dust, Beleaguered By The Same Negation And Despair, Show An Affirming Flame.

Language Is The Mother, Not The Handmaiden, Of Thought; Words Will Tell You Things You Never Thought Or Felt Before.

The Image Of Myself Which I Try To Create In My Own Mind In Order That I May Love Myself Is Very Different From The Image Which I Try To Create In The Minds Of Others In Order That They May Love Me.

Composing Mortals With Immortal Fire.

See Without Looking, Hear Without Listening, Breathe Without Asking.

Left To Itself The Masculine Imagination Has Very Little Appreciation For The Here And Now; It Prefers To Dwell On What Is Absent, On What Has Been Or May Be. If Men Are More Punctual Than Women, It Is Because They Know That, Without The External Discipline Of Clock Time, They Would Never Get Anything Done.

Health Is The State About Which Medicine Has Nothing To Say.

The Chances Are That, In The Course Of His Lifetime, The Major Poet Will Write More Bad Poems Than The Minor, Simply Because Major Poets Write A Lot.

To Make One, There Must Be Two.

We Honor Founders Of These Starving Cities, Whose Honor Is The Image Of Our Sorrow.

Murder Is Unique In That It Abolishes The Party It Injures, So That Society Has To Take The Place Of The Victim And On His Behalf Demand Atonement Or Grant Forgiveness; It Is The One Crime In Which Society Has A Direct Interest.

If Time Were The Wicked Sheriff In A Horse Opera, I'd Pay For Riding Lessons And Take His Gun Away.

Look If You Like, But You Will Have To Leap.

History Marched To The Drums Of A Clear Idea...

The Slogan Of Hell: Eat Or Be Eaten. The Slogan Of Heaven: Eat And Be Eaten.

Attacking Bad Books Is Not Only A Waste Of Time But Also Bad For The Character. If I Find A Book Really Bad, The Only Interest I Can Derive From Writing About It Has To Come From Myself, From Such Display Of Intelligence, Wit And Malice As I Can Contrive. One Cannot Review A Bad Book Without Showing Off.

Those Who Hate To Go To Bed Fear Death; Those Who Hate To Get Up Fear Life.

Every Poet Has His Dream Reader: Mine Keeps A Look Out For Curious Prosodic Fauna Like Bacchics And Choriambs.

Sincerity Is Technique.

When Someone Between Twenty And Forty Says, Apropos Of A Work Of Art, 'i Know What I Like,' He Is Really Saying 'i Have No Taste Of My Own But Accept The Taste Of My Cultural Milieu.

I Don't Think The Mystical Experience Can Be Verbalized. When The Ego Disappears, So Does Power Over Language.

Mystical Experiences

The Condition Of Mankind Is, And Always Has Been, So Miserable And Depraved That, If Anyone Were To Say To The Poet: "for God's Sake Stop Singing And Do Something Useful Like Putting On The Kettle Or Fetching Bandages," What Just Reason Could He Give For Refusing?

As A Rule, It Was The Pleasure-haters Who Became Unjust.

Let Me See What I Wrote So I Know What I Think

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

May It Not Be That, Just As We Have To Have Faith In Him, God Has To Have Faith In Us And, Considering The History Of The Human Race So Far, May It Not Be That 'faith' Is Even More Difficult For Him Than It Is For Us?

We Would Rather Be Ruined Than Changed. We Would Rather Die In Our Dread Than Climb The Cross Of The Moment And Let Our Illusions Die.

Yet No One Hears His Own Remarks As Prose.

Few Can Remember Clearly When Innocence Came To A Sudden End, The Moment At Which We Ask For The First Time: Am I Loved?

Moreover, If Great Men Are The Only Hope Of The Evolutionary Process, They Are Morally Bound To Rule Over The Masses For Their Own Good -- We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others: What On Earth The Others Are Here For, I Don't Know -- And The Masses Have No Right Whatsoever To Resist Them.

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

A Poor American Feels Guilty At Being Poor, But Less Guilty Than An American Rentier Who Has Inherited Wealth But Is Doing Nothingto Increase It; What Can The Latter Do But Take To Drink And Psychoanalysis?

The Poet Marries The Language, And Out Of This Marriage The Poem Is Born.

As Readers, We Remain In The Nursery Stage So Long As We Cannot Distinguish Between Taste And Judgment, So Long, That Is, As The Only Possible Verdicts We Can Pass On A Book Are Two: This I Like; This I Don't Like. For An Adult Reader, The Possible Verdicts Are Five: I Can See This Is Good And I Like It; I Can See This Is Good But I Don't Like It; I Can See This Is Good And, Though At Present I Don't Like It, I Believe That With Perseverance I Shall Come To Like It; I Can See That This Is Trash But I Like It; I Can See That This Is Trash And I Don't Like It.

The Windiest Militant Trash Important Persons Shout Is Not So Crude As Our Wish: What Mad Nijinsky Wrote About Diaghilev Is True Of The Normal Heart; For The Error Bred In The Bone Of Each Woman And Each Man Craves What It Cannot Have; Not Universal Love But To Be Loved Alone.

If It Really Was Queen Elizabeth Who Demanded To See Falstaff In A Comedy, Then She Showed Herself A Very Perceptive Critic. But Even In The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Falstaff Has Not And Could Not Have Found His True Home Because Shakespeare Was Only A Poet. For That He Was To Wait Nearly Two Hundred Years Till Verdi Wrote His Last Opera. Falstaff Is Not The Only Case Of A Character Whose True Home Is The World Of Music; Others Are Tristan, Isolde And Don Giovanni.

Desire, Even In Its Wildest Tantrums, Can Neither Persuade Me It Is Love Nor Stop Me From Wishing It Were.

The Sky Is Darkening Like A Stain Something Is Going To Fall Like Rain And It Won't Be Flowers

No Person Can Be A Great Leader Unless He Takes Genuine Joy In The Successes Of Those Under Him.

Most People Call Something Profound, Not Because It Is Near Some Important Truth But Because It Is Distant From Ordinary Life. Thus, Darkness Is Profound To The Eye, Silence To The Ear; What-is-not Is The Profundity Of What-is.

A Person Incapable Of Imaging Another World Than Given To Him By His Senses Would Be Subhuman, And A Person Who Identifies His Imaginary World With The World Of Sensory Fact Has Become Insane.

The Center That I Cannot Find Is Known To My Unconscious Mind.

Clear, Unscaleable Ahead, Rise The Mountains Of Instead From Whose Cold, Cascading Streams None May Drink Except In Dreams

We Who Must Die Demand A Miracle. How Could The Eternal Do A Temporal Act, The Infinite Become A Finite Fact? Nothing Can Save Us That Is Possible: We Who Must Die Demand A Miracle.

I And The Public Know What All Schoolchildren Learn, Those To Whom Evil Is Done Do Evil In Return.

There Is No Such Thing As The State And No One Exists Alone; Hunger Allows No Choice To The Citizen Or The Police; We Must Love One Another Or Die.

There Must Always Be Two Kinds Of Art: Escape-art, For Man Needs Escape As He Needs Food And Deep Sleep, And Parable-art, That Art Which Shall Teach Man To Unlearn Hatred And Learn Love.

All Pity Is Self-pity.

There Are Not Many English Novels Which Deserve To Be Called Great: Parade's End Is One Of Them.

Pleasure Is By No Means An Infallible Critical Guide, But It Is The Least Fallible.

The Child Unlucky In His Little State, Some Hearth Where Freedom Is Excluded, A Hive Whose Honey Is Fear And Worry, Feels Calmer Now And Somehow Assured Of Escape

Lovers Have Lived So Long With Giants And Elves, They Won't Believe Again In Their Own Size.

Slavery Is So Intolerable A Condition That The Slave Can Hardly Escape Deluding Himself Into Thinking That He Is Choosing To Obey His Master's Commands When, In Fact, He Is Obliged To. Most Slaves Of Habit Suffer From This Delusion And So Do Some Writers, Enslaved By An All Too Personal Style.

Whatever The Field Under Discussion, Those Who Engage In Debate Must Not Only Believe In Each Other's Good Faith, But Also In Their Capacity To Arrive At The Truth.

What Is A Professor Of Poetry? How Can Poetry Be Professed?

Private Faces In Public Places Are Wiser And Nicer Than Public Faces In Private Places.

Christmas And Easter Can Be Subjects For Poetry, But Good Friday, Like Auschwitz, Cannot. The Reality Is So Horrible It Is Not Surprising That People Should Have Found It A Stumbling Block To Faith.

The Only Way To Spend New Year's Eve Is Either Quietly With Friends Or In A Brothel. Otherwise When The Evening Ends And People Pair Off, Someone Is Bound To Be Left In Tears.

The Ogre Does What Ogres Can, Deeds Quite Impossible For Man, But One Prize Is Beyond His Reach, The Ogre Cannot Master Speech: About A Subjugated Plain, Among Its Desperate And Slain, The Ogre Stalks With Hands On Hips, While Drivel Gushes From His Lips.

I See Little Hope For A Peaceful World Until Men Are Excluded From The Realm Of Foreign Policy Altogether And All Decisions Concerning International Relations Are Reserved For Women, Preferably Married Ones.

Oh, How I Wish That Orwell Were Still Alive, So That I Could Read His Comments On Contemporary Events!

Human Language Is Mythological And Metaphorical By Nature.

If It Form The One Landscape That We The Inconstant Ones Are Consistently Homesick For, This Is Chiefly Because It Dissolves In Water.

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters; How Well They Understood Its Human Position; How It Takes Place While Someone Else Is Eating Or Opening A Window Or Just Walking Dully Along.

We Must Love One Another Or Die

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

To Choose What Is Difficult All One's Days, As If It Were Easy, That Is Faith

Thou Shalt Not Answer Questionnaires Or Quizzes Upon World Affairs, Nor With Compliance Take Any Test. Thou Shalt Not Sit With Statisticians Nor Commit A Social Science.

O Let Not Time Deceive You, You Cannot Conquer Time.

All Poets Adore Explosions, Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Conflagrations, Ruins, Scenes Of Spectacular Carnage. The Poetic Imagination Is Not At All A Desirable Quality In A Statesman.

The Theater Has Never Been Any Good Since The Actors Became Gentlemen.

A Poet's Hope: To Be, Like Some Valley Cheese, Local, But Prized Elsewhere.

Looking Up At The Stars, I Know Quite Well That, For All They Care, I Can Go To Hell, But On Earth Indifference Is The Least We Have To Dread From Man Or Beast. How Should We Like It Were Stars To Burn With A Passion For Us We Could Not Return? If Equal Affection Cannot Be, Let The More Loving One Be Me. Admirer As I Think I Am Of Stars That Do Not Give A Damn, I Cannot, Now I See Them, Say I Missed One Terribly All Day. Were All Stars To Disappear Or Die, I Should Learn To Look At An Empty Sky And Feel Its Total Dark Sublime, Though This Might Take Me A Little Time.

You Will Be A Poet Because You Will Always Be Humiliated.

An Unmanly Sort Of Man Whose Love Life Seems To Have Been Largely Confined To Crying In Laps And Playing Mouse.

One Cannot Review A Bad Book Without Showing Off.

Music Can Be Made Anywhere, Is Invisible And Does Not Smell.

No Poet Or Novelist Wishes He Were The Only One Who Ever Lived, But Most Of Them Wish They Were The Only One Alive, And Quite A Number Fondly Believe Their Wish Has Been Granted.

Those To Whom Evil Is Donedo Evil In Return.

What The Mass Media Offers Is Not Popular Art, But Entertainment Which Is Intended To Be Consumed Like Food, Forgotten, And Replaced By A New Dish.

A Craftsman Knows In Advance What The Finished Result Will Be, While The Artist Knows Only What It Will Be When He Has Finished It.

It Takes Little Talent To See What Lies Under One's Nose, A Good Deal To Know In What Direction To Point That Organ.

To Hunt For Symbols In A Fairy Tale Is Absolutely Fatal.

Happy The Hare At Morning, For She Cannot Read The Hunter's Waking Thoughts.

There Has Been A Vast Output Of Critical Studies In Contemporary Poetry, Some Of Them First Rate, But I Do Not Think That , As A Rule, A Poet Should Read Them.

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

One Of The Most Horrible, Yet Most Important, Discoveries Of Our Age Has Been That, If You Really Wish To Destroy A Person And Turn Him Into An Automaton, The Surest Method Is Not Physical Torture, In The Strict Sense, But Simply To Keep Him Awake, I.e., In An Existential Relation To Life Without Intermission.

Young People, Who Are Still Uncertain Of Their Identity, Often Try On A Succession Of Masks In The Hope Of Finding The One Which Suits Them - The One, In Fact, Which Is Not A Mask.

Finding The One

No Good Opera Plot Can Be Sensible, For People Do Not Sing When They Are Feeling Sensible.

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

It Is Already Possible To Imagine A Society In Which The Majority Of The Population, That Is To Say, Its Laborers, Will Have Almost As Much Leisure As In Earlier Times Was Enjoyed By The Aristocracy. When One Recalls How Aristocracies In The Past Actually Behaved, The Prospect Is Not Cheerful.

Behind You Swiftly The Figure Comes Softly, The Spot On Your Skin Is A Shocking Disease.

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

Who On Earth Invented The Silly Convention That It Is Boring Or Impolite To Talk Shop? Nothing Is More Interesting To Listen To, Especially If The Shop Is Not One's Own.

A Small Grove Massacred To The Last Ash, An Oak With Heart-rot, Give Away The Show: This Great Society Is Going To Smash; They Cannot Fool Us With How Fast They Go, How Much They Cost Each Other And The Gods. A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods.

Literary Confessors Are Contemptible, Like Beggars Who Exhibit Their Sores For Money, But Not So Contemptible As The Public That Buys Their Books.

Geniuses Are The Luckiest Of Mortals Because What They Must Do Is The Same As What They Most Want To Do.

Some Writers Confuse Authenticity, Which They Ought Always To Aim At, With Originality, Which They Should Never Bother About.

Funny Basketball

A Verbal Art Like Poetry Is Reflective; It Stops To Think. Music Is Immediate, It Goes On To Become.

To Be Happy Means To Be Free, Not From Pain Or Fear, But From Care Or Anxiety.

The Element Of Craftsmanship In Poetry Is Obscured By The Fact That All Men Are Taught To Speak And Most To Read And Write, While Very Few Men Are Taught To Draw Or Paint Or Write Music.

In Headaches And In Worry Vaguely Life Leaks Away, And Time Will Have His Fancy To-morrow Or Today.

It Is Nonsense To Speak Of 'higher' And 'lower' Pleasures. To A Hungry Man It Is, Rightly, More Important That He Eat Than That He Philosophize.

When One Looks Into The Window Of A Store Which Sells Devotional Art Objects, One Can't Help Wishing The Iconoclasts Had Won.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

You Must Go To Bed With Friends Or Whores, Where Money Makes Up The Difference In Beauty Or Desire.

Between The Ages Of Twenty And Forty We Are Engaged In The Process Of Discovering Who We Are, Which Involves Learning The Differences Between Accidental Limitations Which It Is Our Duty To Outgrow And The Necessary Limitations Of Our Nature Beyond Which We Cannot Trespass With Impunity.

Nobody Is Ever Sent To Hell: He Or She Insists On Going There.

How Should We Like It Were Stars To Burn With A Passion For Us We Could Not Return? If Equal Affection Cannot Be, Let The More Loving One Be Me.

I Know Nothing, Except What Everyone Knows - If There When Grace Dances, I Should Dance.

There Are Good Books Which Are Only For Adults. There Are No Good Books Which Are Only For Children.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

That The Speech Of Self-disclosure Should Be Translatable Seems To Me Very Odd, But I Am Convinced That It Is. The Conclusion That I Draw Is That The Only Quality Which All Human Being Without Exception Possess Is Uniqueness: Any Characteristic, On The Other Hand, Which One Individual Can Be Recognized As Having In Common With Another, Like Red Hair Or The English Language, Implies The Existence Of Other Individual Qualities Which This Classification Excludes.

A Shilling Life Will Give You All The Facts.

My Face Looks Like A Wedding-cake Left Out In The Rain.

Encased In Talent Like A Uniform, The Rank Of Every Poet Is Well Known; They Can Amaze Us Like A Thunderstorm, Or Die So Young, Or Live For Years Alone.

Doom Is Dark And Deeper Than Any Sea-dingle.

For Time Is Inches And The Heart's Changes, Where Ghost Has Haunted Lost And Wanted.

It Is, For Example, Axiomatic That We Should All Think Of Ourselves As Being More Sensitive Than Other People Because, When We Are Insensitive In Our Dealings With Others, We Cannot Be Aware Of It At The Time: Conscious Insensitivity Is A Self-contradiction.

A Man Has His Distinctive Personal Scent Which His Wife, His Children And His Dog Can Recognize. A Crowd Has A Generalized Stink. The Public Is Odorless.

Hemingway Is Terribly Limited. His Technique Is Good For Short Stories, For People Who Meet Once In A Bar Very Late At Night, But Do Not Enter Into Relations. But Not For The Novel.

Life Is A Picnic On A Precipice.

Aphorisms Are Essentially An Aristocratic Genre Of Writing. The Aphorist Does Not Argue Or Explain, He Asserts; And Implicit In His Assertion Is A Conviction That He Is Wiser And More Intelligent Than His Readers.

The Most Important Truths Are Likely To Be Those Which Society At That Time Least Wants To Hear.

A Poem Is A Verbal Artifact Which Must Be As Skillfully And Solidly Constructed As A Table Or A Motorcycle.

He Was My North, My South, My East And West, My Working Week And My Sunday Rest, My Noon, My Midnight, My Talk, My Song; I Thought That Love Would Last Forever: I Was Wrong.

Art Is Our Chief Means Of Breaking Bread With The Dead.

Breaking Silence

Every Autobiography Is Concerned With Two Characters, A Don Quixote, The Ego, And A Sancho Panza, The Self.

A Poet Must Never Make A Statement Simply Because It Is Sounds Poetically Exciting; He Must Also Believe It To Be True.

Criticism Should Be A Casual Conversation.

And None Will Hear The Postman’s Knock Without A Quickening Of The Heart. For Who Can Bear To Feel Himself Forgotten?

Why Doesn't The United States Take Over The Monarchy And Unite With England? England Does Have Important Assets. Naturally The Longer You Wait, The More They Will Dwindle. At Least You Could Use It For A Summer Resort Instead Of Maine.

The Critical Opinions Of A Writer Should Always Be Taken With A Large Grain Of Salt. For The Most Part, They Are Manifestations Of His Debate With Himself As To What He Should Do Next And What He Should Avoid.

August For The People And Their Favourite Islands. Daily The Steamers Sidle Up To Meet The Effusive Welcome Of The Pier.

Blessed Be All Metrical Rules That Forbid Automatic Responses, Force Us To Have Second Thoughts, Free Us From The Fetters Of Self.

We Do Not Change As We Grow Up. The Difference Between The Child And The Adult Is That The Former Doesn't Know Who He Is And The Latter Does.

If Equal Affection Cannot Be, Let The More Loving Be Me.

I'm Always Amazed At The American Practice Of Allowing One Party To A Homosexual Act To Remain Passive--it's So Undemocratic. Sexmust Be Mutual.

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

Soft As The Earth Is Mankind And Both Need To Be Altered.

Civilizations Should Be Measured By The Degree Of Diversity Attained And The Degree Of Unity Retained.

Genealogies Are Admirable Things, Provided They Do Not Encourage The Curious Delusion That Some Families Are Older Than Others.

A Man Is A Form Of Life That Dreams In Order To Act And Acts In Order To Dream.

Long Ago The Accusations Had Begun, And Suddenly Knew By Whom It Had Been Judged

Time And Fevers Burn Away Individual Beauty From Thoughtful Children, And The Grave Proves The Child Ephemeral

No Human Being Is Innocent, But There Is A Class Of Innocent Human Actions Called Games.

How Happy Is The Lot Of The Mathematician! He Is Judged Solely By His Peers, And The Standard Is So High That No Colleague Or Rival Can Ever Win A Reputation He Does Not Deserve. No Cashier Writes A Letter To The Press Complaining About The Incomprehensibility Of Modern Mathematics And Comparing It Unfavorably With The Good Old Days When Mathematicians Were Content To Paper Irregularly Shaped Rooms And Fill Bathtubs Without Closing The Waste Pipe.

Precisely Because We Do Not Communicate By Singing, A Song Can Be Out Of Place But Not Out Of Character; It Is Just As Credible That A Stupid Person Should Sing Beautifully As That A Clever Person Should Do So.

Perhaps There Is Only One Cardinal Sin: Impatience. Because Of Impatience We Were Driven Out Of Paradise, Because Of Impatience We Cannot Return.

Dogmatic Theological Statements Are Neither Logical Propositions Nor Poetic Utterances. They Are ''shaggy Dog'' Stories; They Have A Point, But He Who Tries Too Hard To Get It Will Miss It.

Machines Have No Political Opinions, But They Have Profound Political Effects. They Demand A Strict Regimentation Of Time, And, By Abolishing The Need For Manual Skill, Have Transformed The Majority Of The Population From Workers Into Laborers. There Are, That Is To Say, Fewer And Fewer Jobs Which A Man Can Find A Pride And Satisfaction In Doing Well, More And More Which Have No Interest In Themselves And Can Be Valued Only For The Money They Provide.

A Daydream Is A Meal At Which Images Are Eaten. Some Of Us Are Gourmets, Some Gourmands, And A Good Many Take Their Images Precooked Out Of A Can And Swallow Them Down Whole, Absent-mindedly And With Little Relish.

Stop All The Clocks, Cut Off The Telephone, Prevent The Dog From Barking With A Juicy Bone. Silence The Pianos And With Muffled Drum Bring Out The Coffin, Let The Mourners Come.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

There's Always Another Story. There's More Than Meets The Eye.

More Than Meets The Eye

We Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

History Is, Strictly Speaking, The Study Of Questions; The Study Of Answers Belongs To Anthropology And Sociology.

When I Am In The Company Of Scientists, I Feel Like A Shabby Curate Who Has Strayed By Mistake Into A Drawing Room Full Of Dukes.

One Can Only Blaspheme If One Believes.

The Closest Modern Equivalent To The Homeric Hero Is The Ace Fighter Pilot.

Aside From Purely Technical Analysis, Nothing Can Be Said About Music, Except When It Is Bad; When It Is Good, One Can Only Listen And Be Grateful.

You Need Not See What Someone Is Doing To Know If It Is His Vocation, You Have Only To Watch His Eyes: A Cook Mixing A Sauce, A Surgeon Making A Primary Incision, A Clerk Completing A Bill Of Lading Wear The Same Rapt Expression, Forgetting Themselves In A Function. How Beautiful It Is, That Eye-on-the-obje Ct Look.

Drama Began As The Act Of A Whole Community. Ideally, There Would Be No Speculators. In Practice, Every Member Of The Audience Should Feel Like An Understudy.

To The Man-in-the-street, Who, I'm Sorry To Say, Is A Keen Observer Of Life. The Word Intellectual Suggests Straight Away. A Man Who's Untrue To His Wife.

How Happy The Lot Of The Mathematician. He Is Judged Solely By His Peers, And The Standard Is So High That No Colleague Or Rival Can Ever Win A Reputation He Does Not Deserve.

God May Reduce You On Judgment Day To Tears Of Shame, Reciting By Heart The Poems You Would Have Written, Had Your Life Been Good.

Man Is A History-making Creature, Who Can Neither Repeat His Past, Nor Leave It Behind.

Choice Of Attention - To Pay Attention To This And Ignore That - Is To The Inner Life What Choice Of Action Is To The Outer. In Both Cases, A Man Is Responsible For His Choice And Must Accept The Consequences, Whatever They May Be.

Sob, Heavy World Sob As You Spin, Mantled In Mist Remote From The Happy.

Even The Dreadful Martyrdom Must Run Its Course Anyhow In A Corner, Some Untidy Spot Where The Dogs Go On With Their Doggy Life

To Save Your World You Asked This Man To Die; Would This Man, Could He See You Now, Ask Why?

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

Between Friends Differences In Taste Or Opinion Are Irritating In Direct Proportion To Their Triviality.

Funny Friendship

Funny Best Friend

The Class Distinctions Proper To A Democratic Society Are Not Those Of Rank Or Money, Still Less, As Is Apt To Happen When These Are Abandoned, Of Race, But Of Age.

Before People Complain Of The Obscurity Of Modern Poetry, They Should First Examine Their Consciences And Ask Themselves With How Many People And On How Many Occasions They Have Genuinely And Profoundly Shared Some Experience With Another...

We Are Lived By Powers We Pretend To Understand.

In A Game, Just Losing Is Almost As Satisfying As Just Winning... In Life The Loser's Score Is Always Zero.

Man Desires To Be Free And He Desires To Feel Important. This Places Him In A Dilemma, For The More He Emancipates Himself From Necessity The Less Important He Feels.

Narcissus Does Not Fall In Love With His Reflection Because It Is Beautiful, But Because It Is His. If It Were His Beauty That Enthralled Him, He Would Be Set Free In A Few Years By Its Fading.

The Countenances Of Children, Like Those Of Animals, Are Masks, Not Faces, For They Have Not Yet Developed A Significant Profile Of Their Own.

Money Cannot Buy The Fuel Of Love But Is Excellent Kindling.

Money Is The Necessity That Frees Us From Necessity. Of All Novelists In Any Country, Trollope Best Understands The Role Of Money. Compared With Him Even Balzac Is A Romantic.

I Sit In One Of The Dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain And Afraid As The Clever Hopes Expire Of A Low Dishonest Decade

We All Have These Places Where Shy Humiliations Gambol On Sunny Afternoons.

Sunny Afternoon

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