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Between Labor And Play Stands Work. A Man Is A Worker If He Is Personally Interested In The Job Which Society Pays Him To Do; Whatfrom The Point Of View Of Society Is Necessary Labor Is From His Point Of View Voluntary Play. Whether A Job Is To Be Classified As Labor Or Work Depends, Not On The Job Itself, But On The Tastes Of The Individual Who Undertakes It. The Difference Does Not, For Example, Coincide With The Difference Between A Manual And A Mental Job; A Gardener Or A Cobbler May Be A Worker, A Bank Clerk A Laborer.

-W. H. Auden

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Between Labor And Play

W. H. Auden

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Between Labor And Play Stands Work. A Man Is A Worker If He Is Personally Interested In The Job Which Society Pays Him To Do; Whatfrom The Point Of View Of Society Is Necessary Labor Is From His Point Of View Voluntary Play. Whether A Job Is To Be Classified As Labor Or Work Depends, Not On The Job Itself, But On The Tastes Of The Individual Who Undertakes It. The Difference Does Not, For Example, Coincide With The Difference Between A Manual And A Mental Job; A Gardener Or A Cobbler May Be A Worker, A Bank Clerk A Laborer.

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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.

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

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

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

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

Recipe For The Upbringing Of A Poet: 'as Much Neurosis As The Child Can Bear.

Among Those Whom I Like Or Admire, I Can Find No Common Denominator, But Among Those Whom I Love, I Can: All Of Them Make Me Laugh.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

The Commonest Ivory Tower Is That Of The Average Man, The State Of Passivity Towards Experience.

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

Adjectives Are The Potbelly Of Poetry.

There Are Bills To Be Paid, Machines To Keep In Repair, Irregular Verbs To Learn, The Time Being To Redeem From Insignificance.

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.

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

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.

Good Can Imagine Evil; But Evil Cannot Imagine Good.

You Shall Love Your Crooked Neighbour, With Your Crooked Heart.

Men Will Pay Large Sums To Whores For Telling Them They Are Not Bores.

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.

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

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.

Does God Judge Us By Appearances? I Suspect That He Does.

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

If Music In General Is An Imitation Of History, Opera In Particular Is An Imitation Of Human Willfulness; It Is Rooted In The Fact That We Not Only Have Feelings But Insist Upon Having Them At Whatever Cost To Ourselves. The Quality Common To All The Great Operatic Roles, E.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, Is That Each Of Them Is A Passionate And Willful State Of Being. In Real Life They Would All Be Bores, Even Don Giovanni.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

One Can Only Blaspheme If One Believes.

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

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.

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

More Than Meets The Eye

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

Funny Friendship

Funny Best Friend

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without 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.

Caesar's Double-bed Is Warm As An Unimportant Clerk Writes I Do Not Like My Work On A Pink Official Form.

You Owe It To All Of Us All Get On With What You're Good At.

No Being Can Make Another One Happy.

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

The True Men Of Action In Our Time Those Who Transform The World Are Not The Politicians And Statesmen But The Scientists. Unfortunately Poetry Cannot Celebrate Them Because Their Deeds Are Concerned With Things, Not Persons, And Are Therefore Speechless. When I Find Myself In The Company Of Scientists, I Feel Like A Shabby Curate Who Has Strayed By Mistake Into A Drawing Room Full Of Dukes.

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.

Proper Names Are Poetry In The Raw. Like All Poetry They Are Untranslatable.

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

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.

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

Criticism Should Be A Casual Conversation.

To Pray Is To Pay Attention To Something Or Someone Other Than Oneself. Whenever A Man So Concentrates His Attention - On A Landscape, A Poem, A Geometrical Problem, An Idol, Or The True God - That He Completely Forgets His Own Ego And Desires, He Is Praying. The Primary Task Of The Schoolteacher Is To Teach Children, In A Secular Context, The Technique Of Prayer.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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Acts Of Injustice Done Between The Setting And The Rising Sun In History Lie Like Bones, Each One.

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

The Relation Of Faith Between Subject And Object Is Unique In Every Case. Hundreds May Believe, But Each Has To Believe By Himself.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

The Nightingales Are Sobbing In The Orchards Of Our Mothers, And Hearts That We Broke Long Ago Have Long Been Breaking Others; Tears Are Round, The Sea Is Deep: Roll Them Overboard And Sleep.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Professor Is Someone Who Talks In Someone Else's Sleep.

One Demands Two Things Of A Poem. Firstly, It Must Be A Well-made Verbal Object That Does Honor To The Language In Which It Is Written. Secondly, It Must Say Something Significant About A Reality Common To Us All, But Perceived From A Unique Perspective. What The Poet Says Has Never Been Said Before, But, Once He Has Said It, His Readers Recognize Its Validity For Themselves.

Money Is The Necessity That Frees Us From Necessity.

Murder Is Commoner Among Cooks Than Among Members Of Any Other Profession.

Ideally, Government Is The Means By Which All The Individual Wills Are Assured Complete Freedom Of Moral Choice And At The Same Time Prevented From Ever Clashing.

I Will Love You Forever" Swears The Poet. I Find This Easy To Swear Too. "i Will Love You At 4:15 Pm Next Tuesday" - Is That Still As Easy?

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

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

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

Between Labor And Play Stands Work. A Man Is A Worker If He Is Personally Interested In The Job Which Society Pays Him To Do; Whatfrom The Point Of View Of Society Is Necessary Labor Is From His Point Of View Voluntary Play. Whether A Job Is To Be Classified As Labor Or Work Depends, Not On The Job Itself, But On The Tastes Of The Individual Who Undertakes It. The Difference Does Not, For Example, Coincide With The Difference Between A Manual And A Mental Job; A Gardener Or A Cobbler May Be A Worker, A Bank Clerk A Laborer.

'healing,' Papa Would Tell Me, 'is Not A Science, But The Intuitive Art Of Wooing Nature.'

Whatever You Do, Good Or Bad, People Will Always Have Something Negative To Say

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

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.

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

Of All Possible Subjects, Travel Is The Most Difficult For An Artist, As It Is The Easiest For A Journalist.

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

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

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.

America Has Always Been A Country Of Amateurs Where The Professional, That Is To Say, The Man Who Claims Authority As A Member Of An élite Which Knows The Law In Some Field Or Other, Is An Object Of Distrust And Resentment.

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

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.

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

All Pity Is Self-pity.

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

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.

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

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

A Writer Is A Maker, Not A Man Of Action: His Private Life Is Of No Concern To Anybody But Himself, His Family And His Friends.

The Older Lives Like Not To Be Stood In Rows Or At Right Angles.

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.

Evil Is Unspectacular And Always Human, And Shares Our Bed And Eats At Our Own Table.

Political History Is Far Too Criminal To Be A Fit Subject Of Study For The Young. Children Should Acquire Their Heroes And Villians From Fiction.

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

In Life The Loser's Score Is Always Zero.

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

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

A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Herds Of Reindeer Move Across Miles And Miles Of Golden Moss

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

The Ideal Audience The Poet Imagines Consists Of The Beautiful Who Go To Bed With Him, The Powerful Who Invite Him To Dinner And Tell Him Secrets Of State, And His Fellow-poets. The Actual Audience He Gets Consists Of Myopic Schoolteachers, Pimply Young Men Who Eat In Cafeterias, And His Fellow-poets. This Means, In Fact, He Writes For His Fellow-poets.

With The Farming Of A Verse Make A Vineyard Of The Curse

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

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.

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.

And Make Us As Newton Was, Who In His Garden Watching The Apple Falling Towards England, Became Aware Between Himself And Her Of An Eternal Tie.

All The Rest Is Silence On The Other Side Of The Wall, And The Silence Ripeness, And The Ripeness All.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

Thank God For Books As An Alternative To Conversation.

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.

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

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.

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.

The Eye Likes Novelty, But The Ear Craves Familiarity.

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

Anyone Who Has A Child Today Should Train Him To Be Either A Physicist Or A Ballet Dancer. Then He'll Escape.

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

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

Be Subtle, Various, Ornamental, Clever, And Do Not Listen To Those Critics Ever Whose Crude Provincial Gullets Crave In Books Plain Cooking Made Still Plainer By Plain Cooks.

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?

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

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.

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.

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

Sexual Fidelity Is More Important In A Homosexual Relationship Than In Any Other. In Other Relationships There Are A Variety Of Ties. But Here, Fidelity Is The Only Bond.

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

Our Researchers Into Public Opinion Are Content That He Held The Proper Opinions For The Time Of Year; When There Was Peace, He Was For Peace: When There Was War, He Went. He Was Married And Added Five Children To The Population, Which Our Eugenist Says Was The Right Number For A Parent Of His Generation, And Our Teachers Report That He Never Interfered With Their Education. Was He Free? Was He Happy? The Question Is Absurd: Had Everything Been Wrong, We Should Certainly Have Heard.

Yet No One Hears His Own Remarks As Prose.

If We Really Want To Live, We'd Better Start At Once To Try.

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

A Shilling Life Will Give You All The Facts.

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.

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.

I Am Sure It Is Everyone’s Experience, As It Has Been Mine, That Any Discovery We Make About Ourselves Or The Meaning Of Life Is Never, Like A Scientific Discovery, A Coming Upon Something Entirely New And Unsuspected; It Is Rather, The Coming To Conscious Recognition Of Something, Which We Really Knew All The Time But, Because We Were Unwilling To Formulate It Correctly, We Did Not Hitherto Know We Knew.

Meaning Of Life

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

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.

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

To Discover How To Be Human Now Is The Reason We Follow This Star.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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."

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

An Honest Self-portrait Is Extremely Rare Because A Man Who Has Reached The Degree Of Self-consciousness Presupposed By The Desire To Paint His Own Portrait Has Almost Always Also Developed An Ego-consciousness Which Paints Himself Painting Himself, And Introduces Artificial Highlights And Dramatic Shadows.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

I Smell Blood And An Era Of Prominent Madmen.

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.

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

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.

God Bless The Usa, So Large, So Friendly, And So Rich.

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.

A Writer, Or At Least A Poet, Is Always Being Asked By People Who Should Know Better: “whom Do You Write For?” The Question Is, Of Course, A Silly One, But I Can Give It A Silly Answer. Occasionally I Come Across A Book Which I Feel Has Been Written Especially For Me And For Me Only. Like A Jealous Lover I Don’t Want Anybody Else To Hear Of It. To Have A Million Such Readers, Unaware Of Each Other’s Existence, To Be Read With Passion And Never Talked About, Is The Daydream, Surely, Of Every Author.

Sincerity Is Technique.

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

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

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

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

There Is A Great Deal Of Difference In Believing Something Still, And Believing It Again.

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

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

The Only Reason The Protestants And Catholics Have Given Up The Idea Of Universal Domination Is Because They've Realised They Can't Get Away With It.

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

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

Mystical Experiences

A God Who Is Both Self-sufficient And Content To Remain So Could Not Interest Us Enough To Raise The Question Of His Existence.

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

It's Frightening How Easy It Is To Commit Murder In America. Just A Drink Too Much. I Can See Myself Doing It. In England, One Feels All The Social Restraints Holding One Back. But Here, Anything Can Happen.

Earth, Receive An Honored Guest; William Yeats Is Laid To Rest. Let The Irish Vessel Lie Emptied Of Its Poetry.

Mad Ireland Hurt You Into Poetry.

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

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.

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

Rhymes, Meters, Stanza Forms, Etc., Are Like Servants. If The Master Is Fair Enough To Win Their Affection And Firm Enough To Command Their Respect, The Result Is An Orderly Happy Household. If He Is Too Tyrannical, They Give Notice; If He Lacks Authority, They Become Slovenly, Impertinent, Drunk And Dishonest.

Dance Till The Stars Come Down From The Rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till You Drop.

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

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

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

Each In The Cell Of Himself Is Almost Convinced Of His Freedom.

The Stars Are Dead. The Animals Will Not Look: We Are Left Alone With Our Day, And The Time Is Short, And History To The Defeated May Say Alas But Cannot Help Nor Pardon.

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

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