Background Image

...

Behind The Corpse In The Reservoir, Behind The Ghost On The Links, Behind The Lady Who Dances And The Man Who Madly Drinks, Under The Look Of Fatigue, The Attack Of Migraine And The Sigh There Is Always Another Story, There Is More Than Meets The Eye.

-W. H. Auden

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Behind The Corpse In

W. H. Auden

...

Behind The Corpse In The Reservoir, Behind The Ghost On The Links, Behind The Lady Who Dances And The Man Who Madly Drinks, Under The Look Of Fatigue, The Attack Of Migraine And The Sigh There Is Always Another Story, There Is More Than Meets The Eye.

Views: 98557

Topic

More From W. H. Auden

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Way To Read A Fairy Tale Is To Throw Yourself In.

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.

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

Most Poetry Is The Utterance Of A Man In Some State Of Passion, Love, Joy, Grief, Rage, Etc., And No Doubt This Is As It Should Be. But No Man Is Perpetually In A Passion And Those States In Which He Is Amused And Amusing, Detached And Irreverent, If Less Important, Are No Less Amusing. If There Were No Poets Who, Like Byron, Express These States, Poetry Would Lack Something.

Swans In The Winter Air A White Perfection Have

All I Have Is A Voice To Undo The Folded Lie, The Romantic Lie In The Brain Of The Sensual Man-in-the-street And The Lie Of Authority Whose Buildings Grope The Sky: 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.

Composing Mortals With Immortal Fire.

In The Deserts Of The Heart Let The Healing Fountain Start.

Life Is A Picnic On A Precipice.

Christ Did Not Enchant Men; He Demanded That They Believe In Him: Except On One Occasion, The Transfiguration. For A Brief While, Peter, James, And John Were Permitted To See Him In His Glory. For That Brief While They Had No Need Of Faith. The Vision Vanished, And The Memory Of It Did Not Prevent Them From All Forsaking Him When He Was Arrested, Or Peter From Denying That He Had Ever Known Him.

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

The Definition Of Prayer Is Paying Careful And Concentrated Attention To Something Other Than Your Own Constructions.

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others; What On Earth The Others Are Here For I Don't Know.

So Long As We Think Of It Objectively, Time Is Fate Or Chance, The Factor In Our Lives For Which We Are Not Responsible, And About Which We Can Do Nothing; But When We Begin To Think Of It Subjectively, We Feel Responsible For Our Time, And The Notion Of Punctuality Arises.

Music Is The Best Means We Have Of Digesting Time.

A Poet, Qua Poet, Has Only One Political Duty, Namely, In His Own Writing To Set An Example Of The Correct Use Of His Mother Tongue, Which Is Always Being Corrupted. When Words Lose Their Meaning, Physical Force Takes Over.

Poetry Is The Only Art People Haven't Learned To Consume Like Soup.

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

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.

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

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

Out On The Lawn I Lie In Bed, Vega Conspicuous Overhead.

One Of The Troubles Of Our Times Is That We Are All, I Think, Precocious As Personalities And Backward As Characters.

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.

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

The Glacier Knocks In The Cupboard, The Desert Sighs In The Bed, And The Crack In The Teacup Opens A Lane To The Land Of The Dead.

In Addition To English, At Least One Ancient Language, Probably Greek Or Hebrew, And Two Modern Languages Would Be Required.

To Pray Is To Pay Attention To Something Or Someone Other Than Oneself.

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

Mystical Experiences

Cathedrals, Luxury Liners Laden With Souls, Holding To The East Their Hulls Of Stone.

One Can Only Blaspheme If One Believes.

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.

But Once In A While The Odd Thing Happens Once In A While The Dream Comes True And The Whole Pattern Of Life Is Altered Once In A While, The Moon Turns Blue

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

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

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

Words Are For Those With Promises To Keep.

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

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

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.

Learn From Your Dreams What You Lack.

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.

We Are Not Commanded (or Forbidden) To Love Our Mates, Our Children, Our Friends, Our Country Because Such Affections Come Naturally To Us And Are Good In Themselves, Although We May Corrupt Them. We Are Commanded To Love Our Neighbor Because Our Natural Attitude Toward The Other Is One Of Either Indifference Or Hostility.

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.

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.

What We Have Not Named As A Symbol Escapes Our Notice.

Poetry Makes Nothing Happen.

My Deepest Feeling About Politicians Is That They Are Dangerous Lunatics To Be Avoided When Possible And Carefully Humored; People, Above All, To Whom One Must Never Tell The Truth.

The Trees Encountered On A Country Stroll Reveal A Lot About That Country's Soul ... A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods.

You Know There Are No Secrets In America. It's Quite Different In England, Where People Think Of A Secret As A Shared Relation Between Two People.

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

We Till Shadowed Days Are Done, We Must Weep And Sing Duty's Conscious Wrong, The Devil In The Clock

From Beginning To End Wilde Performed His Life And Continued To Do So Even After Fame Had Taken The Plot Out Of His Own Hands.

The Habit-forming Pain, Mismanagement And Grief: We Must Suffer Them All Again.

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

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

Funny Basketball

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.

The Desires Of The Heart Are As Crooked As Corkscrews Not To Be Born Is The Best For Man The Second Best Is A Formal Order The Dance's Pattern, Dance While You Can. Dance, Dance, For The Figure Is Easy The Tune Is Catching And Will Not Stop Dance Till The Stars Come Down From The Rafters Dance, Dance, Dance Till You Drop.

The Words Of A Dead Man Are Modified In The Guts Of The Living.

We Are Lived By Powers We Pretend To Understand.

To Have A Sense Of Sin Means To Feel Guilty At There Being An Ethical Choice To Make, A Guilt Which, However "good" I May Become, Remains Unchanged.

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

Lost In A Haunted Wood, Children Afraid Of The Night Who Have Never Been Happy Or Good.

I Smell Blood And An Era Of Prominent Madmen.

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

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

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

In Brueghel’s Icarus, For Instance: How Everything Turns Away Quite Leisurely From The Disaster, The Ploughman May Have Heard The Splash, The Forsaken Cry, But For Him It Was Not An Important Failure; The Sun Shone As It Had To On The White Legs Disappearing Into The Green Water, And The Expensive Ship That Must Have Seen Something Amazing, A Boy Falling Out Of The Sky, Had Somewhere To Get To And Sailed Calmly On.

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.

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.

It's Better To Say, 'i'm Suffering,' Than To Say, 'this Landscape Is Ugly.

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.

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.

Without Art, We Should Have No Notion Of The Sacred; Without Science, We Should Always Worship False Gods.

In Order That People May Be Happy In Their Work, These Three Things Are Needed: They Must Be Fit For It: They Must Not Do Too Much Of It: And They Must Have A Sense Of Success In It - Not A Doubtful Sense, Such As Needs Some Testimony Of Others For Its Confirmation, But A Sure Sense, Or Rather Knowledge, That So Much Work Has Been Done Well, And Fruitfully Done, Whatever The World May Say Or Think About It.

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.

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.

The Parlour Cars And Pullmans Are Packed Also With Scented Assassins, Salad-eaters Who Murder On Milk.

There Was Still Gold And Silver In The Mountains, And Hunger Was A More Immediate Sorrow

Say This City Has Ten Million Souls, Some Are Living In Mansions, Some Are Living In Holes: Yet There’s No Place For Us, My Dear, Yet There’s No Place For Us.

What The Poet Says Has Never Been Said Before, But, Once He Has Said It, His Readers Recognize Its Validity For Themselves.

All Wishes, Whatever Their Apparent Content, Have The Same And Unvarying Meaning: "i Refuse To Be What I Am."

We Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

The Truly Tragic Kind Of Suffering Is The Kind Produced And Defiantly Insisted Upon By The Hero Himself So That, Instead Of Making Him Better, It Makes Him Worse And When He Dies He Is Not Reconciled To The Law But Defiant, That Is, Damned. Lear Is Not A Tragic Hero, Othello Is.

To Ask The Hard Question Is Simple.

A Tremendous Number Of People In America Work Very Hard At Something That Bores Them. Even A Rich Man Thinks He Has To Go Down To The Office Everyday. Not Because He Likes It But Because He Can't Think Of Anything Else To Do.

The Most Exciting Rhythms Seem Unexpected And Complex, The Most Beautiful Melodies Simple And Inevitable.

The Three Wiseman: The Weather Has Been Awful, The Countryside Is Dreary, Marsh, Jungle, Rock; And Echoes Mock, Calling Our Hope Unlawful; But A Silly Song Can Help Along Yours Ever And Sincerely: At Least We Know For Certain That We Are Three Old Sinners, That This Journey Is Much Too Long, That We Want Our Dinners, And Miss Our Wives, Our Books, Our Dogs, But Have Only The Vaguest Idea Why We Are What We Are. To Discover How To Be Human Now Is The Reason We Follow This Star.

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.

Sincerity Is Technique.

All I Have Is A Voice.

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

Human Beings Are, Necessarily, Actors Who...can Be Divided...into The Sane Who Know They Are Acting And The Mad Who Do Not.

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?

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.

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.

We Must Love One Another Or Die

A Poet Feels The Impulse To Create A Work Of Art When The Passive Awe Provoked By An Event Is Transformed Into A Desire To Express That Awe In A Rite Of Worship.

Every High C Accurately Struck Demolishes The Theory That We Are The Irresponsible Puppets Of Fate Or Chance.

The Stars Are Not Wanted Now, Put Out Every One Pack Up The Moon & Dismantle The Sun.

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.

The Basic Stimulus To The Intelligence Is Doubt, A Feeling That The Meaning Of An Experience Is Not Self-evident.

Over The Tea-cups And In The Square The Tongue Has Its Desire; Still Waters Run Deep, My Dear, There's Never Smoke Without Fire.

A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods

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

Base Words Are Uttered Only By The Base And Can For Such At Once Be Understood; But Noble Platitudes - Ah, There's A Case Where The Most Careful Scrutiny Is Needed To Tell A Voice That's Genuinely Good From One That's Base But Merely Has Succeeded.

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

Breaking Silence

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

Laziness Acknowledges The Relation Of The Present To The Past But Ignores Its Relation To The Future; Impatience Acknowledge Its Relation To The Future But Ignores Its Relation To The Past; Neither The Lazy Nor The Impatient Man, That Is, Accepts The Present Instant In Its Full Reality And So Cannot Love His Neighbour Completely.

Now The Leaves Are Falling Fast, Nurse's Flowers Will Not Last; Nurses To Their Graves Are Gone, And The Prams Go Rolling On.

We Were Put On This Earth To Help Others. Why Others Were Put Here Is Beyond Me.

At First Critics Classified Authors As Ancients, That Is To Say, Greek And Latin Authors, And Moderns, That Is To Say, Every Post-classical Author. Then They Classified Them By Eras, The Augustans, The Victorians, Etc., And Now They Classify Them By Decades, The Writers Of The '30's, '40's, Etc. Very Soon, It Seems, They Will Be Labeling Authors, Like Automobiles, By The Year.

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.

Dance, Dance, Dance Till You Drop.

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.

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

All Pity Is Self-pity.

The Friends Who Met Here And Embraced Are Gone, Each To His Own Mistake.

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

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

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

To Read Is To Translate, For No Two Persons' Experiences Are The Same. A Bad Reader Is Like A Bad Translator: He Interprets Literally When He Ought To Paraphrase And Paraphrases When He Ought To Interpret Literally.

Most People Enjoy The Sight Of Their Own Handwriting As They Enjoy The Smell Of Their Own Farts.

The Surest Sign That A Man Has A Genuine Taste Of His Own Is That He Is Uncertain Of It.

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

As Biological Organisms Made Of Matter, We Are Subject To The Laws Of Physics And Biology: As Conscious Persons Who Create Our Own History We Are Free To Decide What That History Shall Be. Without Science, We Should Have No Notion Of Equality; Without Art, No Notion Of Liberty.

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.

Intellectual Disgrace Stares From Every Human Face, And The Seas Of Pity Lie Locked And Frozen In Each Eye.

Without Communication With The Dead, A Fully Human Life Is Not Possible.

But If A Stranger In The Train Asks Me My Occupation, I Never Answer "writer" For Fear That He May Go On To Ask Me What I Write, And To Answer "poetry" Would Embarrass Us Both, For We Both Know That Nobody Can Earn A Living Simply By Writing Poetry.

Organic Growth Is A Cyclical Process; It Is Just As True To Say That The Oak Is A Potential Acorn As It Is To Say The Acorn Is A Potential Oak. But The Process Of Writing A Poem, Of Making Any Art Object, Is Not Cyclical But A Motion In One Direction Toward A Definite End.

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

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

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.

Of Course, Behaviourism 'works'. So Does Torture. Give Me A No-nonsense, Down-to-earth Behaviourist, A Few Drugs, And Simple Electrical Appliances, And In Six Months I Will Have Him Reciting The Athanasian Creed In Public.

It's Frightfully Important For A Writer To Be His Age, Not To Be Younger Or Older Than He Is. One Might Ask, "what Should I Write At The Age Of Sixty-four," But Never, "what Should I Write In 1940."

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

To My Generation No Other English Poet Seemed So Perfectly To Express The Sensibility Of A Male Adolescent. If I Do Not Now Turn To Him Very Often, I Am Eternally Grateful To Him For The Joy He Gave Me In My Youth.

A Shilling Life Will Give You All The Facts.

Follow, Poet, Follow Right To The Bottom Of The Night, With Your Unconstraining Voice Still Persuade Us To Rejoice; With The Farming Of A Verse Make A Vineyard Of The Curse, Sing Of Human Unsuccess In A Rapture Of Distress; In The Deserts Of The Heart Let The Healing Fountain Start, In The Prison Of His Days Teach The Free Man How To Praise.

Almost All Of Our Relationships Begin And Most Of Them Continue As Forms Of Mutual Exploitation, A Mental Or Physical Barter, To Be Terminated When One Or Both Parties Run Out Of Goods.

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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

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.

If We Apply The Term Revolution To What Happened In North America Between 1776 And 1829, It Has A Special Meaning. Normally, The Word Describes The Process By Which Man Transforms Himself From One Kind Of Man, Living In One Kind Of Society, With One Way Of Looking At The World, Into Another Kind Of Man, Another Society, Another Conception Of Life.... The American Case Is Different: It Is Not A Question Of The Old Man Transforming Himself Into The New, But Of The New Man Becoming Alive To The Fact That He Is New, That He Has Been Transformed Already Without His Having Realized It.

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

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.

Harrow The House Of The Dead; Look Shining At New Styles Of Architecture, A Change Of Heart.

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

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.

What Answer To The Meaning Of Existence Should One Require Beyond The Right To Exercise One's Gifts?

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

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.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So, Time Only Knows The Price We Have To Pay; If I Could Tell You I Would Let You Know.

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

God Is Love, We Are Taught As Children To Believe. But When We First Begin To Get Some Inkling Of How He Loves Us, We Are Repelled; It Seems So Cold, Indeed, Not Love At All As We Understand The Word.

One Cannot Review A Bad Book Without Showing Off.

Though One Cannot Always Remember Exactly Why One Has Been Happy, There Is No Forgetting That One Was.

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.

All That We Are Not Stares Back At What We Are.

There Is No Love; There Are Only The Various Envies, All Of Them Sad.

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

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.

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

Funny Friendship

Funny Best Friend

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

A Doctor, Like Anyone Else Who Has To Deal With Human Beings, Each Of Them Unique, Cannot Be A Scientist; He Is Either, Like The Surgeon, A Craftsman, Or, Like The Physician And The Psychologist, An Artist. This Means That In Order To Be A Good Doctor A Man Must Also Have A Good Character, That Is To Say, Whatever Weaknesses And Foibles He May Have, He Must Love His Fellow Human Beings In The Concrete And Desire Their Good Before His Own.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

Few People Take An Interest In Iceland, But In Those Few The Interest Is Passionate.

It's A Pity I Am So Impatient And Careless, As Any Ordinary Person Could Learn All The Techniques Of Photography In A Week. It Is The Democratic Art, I.e. Technical Skill Is Practically Eliminated - The More Foolproof Cameras Become With Focusing And Exposure Gadgets The Better - And Artistic Quality Depends Only On Choice Of Subject.

A Vice In Common Can Be The Ground Of A Friendship But Not A Virtue In Common. X And Y May Be Friends Because They Are Both Drunkards Or Womanizers But, If They Are Both Sober And Chaste, They Are Friends For Some Other Reason.

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.

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

Had Greek Civilization Never Existed ... We Would Never Have Become Fully Conscious.

It's Usually The Stupid People That Develop Long Illnesses. You Need More Than Indolence And Selfishness, You Need Endurance To Make A Good Patient.

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

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.

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.

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

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

People Always Get What They Want. But There Is A Price For Everything. Failures Are Either Those Who Do Not Know What They Want Or Are Not Prepared To Pay The Price Asked Them. The Price Varies From Individual To Individual. Some Get Things At Bargain-sale Prices, Others Only At Famine Prices. But It Is No Use Grumbling. Whatever Price You Are Asked, You Must Pay.

Fame Often Makes A Writer Vain, But Seldom Makes Him Proud.

In A World Of Prayer, We Are All Equal In The Sense That Each Of Us Is A Unique Person, With A Unique Perspective On The World, A Member Of A Class Of One.

All Good Art Is In The Nature Of A Letter Written To Amuse A Sick Friend. Too Much Art, Particularly In Our Time, Is Only A Letter Written To Oneself.

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.

As A Poet, There Is Only One Political Duty, And That Is To Defend One's Language From Corruption.

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.

Let Us Honor If We Can The Vertical Man, Though We Value None But The Horizontal One

There Are Three Cardinal Rules - Don't Take Somebody Else's Boyfriend Unless You've Been Specifically Invited To Do So, Don't Take A Drink Without Being Asked, And Keep A Scrupulous Accounting In Financial Matters.

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.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

Beauty, Midnight, Vision Dies: Let The Winds Of Dawn That Blow Softly Round Your Dreaming Head Such A Day Of Welcome Show Eye And Knocking Heart May Bless, Find Our Mortal World Enough; Noons Of Dryness Find You Fed By The Involuntary Powers, Nights Of Insult Let You Pass Watched By Every Human Love.

Machines Are Beneficial To The Degree That They Eliminate The Need For Labor, Harmful To The Degree That They Eliminate The Need For Skill.

Thank God For Books As An Alternative To Conversation.

Trending Author

Category