Background Image

...

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.

-W. H. Auden

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In Brueghel’s Icarus, For

W. H. Auden

...

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.

Views: 91013

Topic

More From W. H. Auden

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Death Is The Sound Of Distant Thunder At A Picnic.

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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

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.

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

Accurate Scholarship Can Unearth The Whole Offence From Luther Untill Noe That Has Driven A Culture Mad. From What Occured At Linz What Huge Imago Made A Psychopathic God. I And The Public Know What All Schoolchildren Learn Those To Whom Evil Is Done Do Evil In Return.

We Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

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.

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.

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

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.

Those To Whom Evil Is Donedo Evil In Return.

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

A Shilling Life Will Give You All The Facts.

The Poet Who Writes "free" Verse Is Like Robinson Crusoe On His Desert Island: He Must Do All His Cooking, Laundry And Darning For Himself. In A Few Exceptional Cases, This Manly Independence Produces Something Original And Impressive, But More Often The Result Is Squalor - Dirty Sheets On The Unmade Bed And Empty Bottles On The Unswept Floor.

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.

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

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

Now Is The Age Of Anxiety.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Sunny Afternoon

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

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

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.

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.

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

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

Of Course,behaviourism 'works'. So Does Torture.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

Good Can Imagine Evil; But Evil Cannot Imagine Good.

Words Have No Word For Words That Are Not True.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Far From His Illness The Wolves Ran On Through The Evergreen Forests, The Peasant River Was Untempted By The Fashionable Quays; By Mourning Tongues The Death Of The Poet Was Kept From His Poems.

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.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

Criticism Should Be A Casual Conversation.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

No Being Can Make Another One Happy.

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.

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

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

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

Words Are For Those With Promises To Keep.

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

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

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

Composing Mortals With Immortal Fire.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But He Would Have Us Most Of All Remember To Be Enthusiastic Over The Night. Not Only For The Sense Of Wonder It Alone Has To Offer But Also Because It Needs Our Love. For With Sad Eyes Its Delectable Creatures Look Up And Beg Us Dumbly To Ask Them To Follow. They Are Exiles Who Long For A Future That Lies In Our Power.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Than Meets The Eye

Learn From Your Dreams What You Lack.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

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

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

Beloved, We Are Always In The Wrong, Handling So Clumsily Our Stupid Lives, Suffering Too Little Or Too Long, Too Careful Even In Our Selfish Loves: The Decorative Manias We Obey Die In Grimaces Round Us Every Day, Yet Through Their Tohu-bohu Comes A Voice Which Utters An Absurd Command - Rejoice.

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

Sincerity Is Technique.

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

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.

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

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

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.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

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.

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

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.

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

A Poet Is A Professional Maker Of Verbal Objects.

All I Have Is A Voice.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's Impossible To Represent A Saint [in Art]. It Becomes Boring. Perhaps Because He Is, Like The Saturday Evening Post People, Inthe Position Of Having Almost Infinitely Free Will.

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

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.

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

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

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

Warm Are The Still And Lucky Miles, White Shores Of Longing Stretch Away, A Light Of Recognition Fills The Whole Great Day, And Bright The Tiny World Of Lovers' Arms. Silence Invades The Breathing Wood Where Drowsy Limbs A Treasure Keep, Now Greenly Falls The Learned Shade Across The Sleeping Brows And Stirs Their Secret To A Smile. Restored! Returned! The Lost Are Borne On Seas Of Shipwreck Home At Last: See! In A Fire Of Praising Burns The Dry Dumb Past, And We Our Life-day Long Shall Part No More.

The Belief That Politics Can Be Scientific Must Inevitably Produce Tyrannies. Politics Cannot Be A Science, Because In Politics Theory And Practice Cannot Be Separated, And The Sciences Depend Upon Their Separation. Empirical Politics Must Be Kept In Bounds By Democratic Institutions, Which Leave It Up To The Subjects Of The Experiment To Say Whether It Shall Be Tried, And To Stop It If They Dislike It, Because, In Politics, There Is A Distinction, Unknown To Science, Between Truth And Justice.

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

All Pity Is Self-pity.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Ear Tends To Be Lazy, Craves The Familiar And Is Shocked By The Unexpected; The Eye, On The Other Hand, Tends To Be Impatient, Craves The Novel And Is Bored By Repetition.

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

Herds Of Reindeer Move Across Miles And Miles Of Golden Moss

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

Trending Author

Millard Fillmore

Category