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

-W. H. Auden

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Evil Is Unspectacular And

W. H. Auden

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

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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.

Every American Poet Feels That The Whole Responsibility For Contemporary Poetry Has Fallen Upon His Shoulders, That He Is A Literary Aristocracy Of One.

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.

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

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.

In Relation To A Writer, Most Readers Believe In The Double Standard: They May Be Unfaithful To Him As Often As They Like, But He Must Never, Never Be Unfaithful To Them.

Double Standard

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Words Have No Word For Words That Are Not True.

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.

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

In The End, Art Is Small Beer. The Really Serious Things Are Earning One's Living So As Not To Be A Parasite And Loving One's Neighbor.

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

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

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.

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

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

Now Is The Age Of Anxiety.

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.

Sincerity Is Technique.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Get Up Very Early And Get Going At Once. In Fact, Work First And Wash Afterwards.

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.

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

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

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

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

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.

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

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.

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 Poet Is, Before Anything Else, A Person Who Is Passionately In Love With Language.

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.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

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.

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.

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

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

If Age, Which Is Certainly Just As Wicked As Youth, Look Any Wiser, It Is Only That Youth Is Still Able To Believe It Will Get Away With Anything, While Age Knows Only Too Well That It Has Got Away With Nothing.

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

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

The True Men Of Action In Our Time, Those Who Transform The World, Are Not The Politicians And Statesmen, But The Scientists

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adjectives Are The Potbelly Of Poetry.

A Poet Can Write About A Man Slaying A Dragon, But Not About A Man Pushing A Button That Releases A Bomb.

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

Funny Basketball

Doom Is Dark And Deeper Than Any Sea-dingle.

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.

If There Are Any Souls In Hell, It Is Because That Is Where They Insist On Being.

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

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

A Poet Is A Professional Maker Of Verbal Objects.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

More Than Meets The Eye

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

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

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.

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

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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...

Courses In Prosody, Rhetoric And Comparative Philology Would Be Required Of All Students, And Every Student Would Have To Select Three Courses Out Of Courses In Mathematics, Natural History, Geology, Meteorology, Archaeology, Mythology, Liturgics, Cooking.

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

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

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

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.

Like Love We Don't Know Where Or Why Like Love We Cant Compel Or Fly Like Love We Often Weep Like Love We Seldom Keep

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

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

I Just Try To Put The Thing Out And Hope Somebody Will Read It. Someone Says: 'whom Do You Write For?' I Reply: 'do You Read Me?' If They Say 'yes,' I Say, 'do You Like It?' If They Say 'no,' Then I Say, 'i Don't Write For You.'

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.

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

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

Those Who Will Not Reason, Perish In The Act. Those Who Will Not Act, Perish For That Reason.

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?

Music Is The Best Means We Have Of Digesting Time.

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

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.

I Don't Get Acting Jobs Because Of My Looks.

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

Into This Neutral Air Where Blind Skyscrapers Use Their Full Height To Proclaim The Strength Of Collective Man, Each Language Pours Its Vain Competitive Excuse.

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

We Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

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

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.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

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

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.

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.

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

In A Land Which Is Fully Settled, Most Men Must Accept Their Local Environment Or Try To Change It By Political Means; Only The Exceptionally Gifted Or Adventurous Can Leave To Seek His Fortune Elsewhere. In America, On The Other Hand, To Move On And Make A Fresh Start Somewhere Else Is Still The Normal Reaction To Dissatisfaction And Failure.

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.

Our Sufferings And Weaknesses, In So Far As They Are Personal, Are Of No Literary Interest Whatsoever. They Are Only Interesting In So Far As We Can See Them As Typical Of The Human Condition.

We Must Love One Another Or Die

All Pity Is Self-pity.

Shall Memory Restore The Steps And The Shore, The Face And The Meeting Place.

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.

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.

Yet No One Hears His Own Remarks As Prose.

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

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

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

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

O Plunge Your Hands In Water, Plunge Them In Up To The Wrist; Stare, Stare In The Basin And Wonder What You've Missed.

Composing Mortals With Immortal Fire.

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.

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.

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

I Think The First Prerequisite To Civilization Is An Ability To Make Polite Conversation.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

To Me Art's Subject Is The Human Clay, / And Landscape But A Background To A Torso; / All Cezanne's Apples I Would Give Away / For One Small Goya Or A Daumier.

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.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love, Human On My Faithless Arm.

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

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

To Ask The Hard Question Is Simple.

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.

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

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

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

Thank God For Books As An Alternative To Conversation.

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.

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

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."

Art Is Born Of Humiliation.

There Is A Certain Kind Of Person Who Is So Dominated By The Desire To Be Loved For Himself Alone That He Has Constantly To Test Those Around Him By Tiresome Behavior; What He Says And Does Must Be Admired, Not Because It Is Intrinsically Admirable, But Because It Is His Remark, His Act. Does Not This Explain A Good Deal Of Avant-garde Art?

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.

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.

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

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.

In The Eyes Of Others A Man Is A Poet If He Has Written One Good Poem. In His Own He Is Only A Poet At The Moment When He Is Making His Last Revision To A New Poem. The Moment Before, He Was Still Only A Potential Poet; The Moment After, He Is A Man Who Has Ceased To Write Poetry, Perhaps Forever.

Swans In The Winter Air A White Perfection Have

My Poetry Doesn't Change From Place To Place - It Changes With The Years. It's Very Important To Be One's Age. You Get Ideas You Have To Turn Down - 'i'm Sorry, No Longer'; 'i'm Sorry, Not Yet.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

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.

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.

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