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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.

-W. H. Auden

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People Always Get What

W. H. Auden

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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.

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Cats Can Be Very Funny, And Have The Oddest Ways Of Showing They're Glad To See You.

The Eye Likes Novelty, But The Ear Craves Familiarity.

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

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

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

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

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 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.

Life Is A Picnic On A Precipice.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

We Are Lived By Powers We Pretend To Understand.

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.

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.

A Poet Is A Professional Maker Of Verbal Objects.

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

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Money Is The Necessity That Frees Us From Necessity.

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

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

One Cannot Review A Bad Book Without Showing Off.

Words Have No Word For Words That Are Not True.

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

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.

Good Can Imagine Evil; But Evil Cannot Imagine Good.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

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

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.

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

The Camera May Do Justice To Laughter, But Must Degrade Sorrow.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

To 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.

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

I Smell Blood And An Era Of Prominent Madmen.

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.

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

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.

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Mad Ireland Hurt You Into Poetry.

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.

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

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.

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

A Real Book Is Not One That We Read, But One That Reads Us.

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

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.

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

Funny Basketball

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.

I'll Love You Till The Ocean Is Folded And Hung Up To Dry And The Seven Stars Go Squawking Like Geese About The Sky.

The 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Make One, There Must Be Two.

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

We Must Love One Another Or Die

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

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...

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."

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

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

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

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

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

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Every Man Carries With Him Through Life A Mirror, As Unique And Impossible To Get Rid Of As His Shadow.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Our Claim To Our Own Bodies And Our World Is Our Catastrophe.

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.

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

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

In Times Of Joy, All Of Us Wished We Possessed A Tail We Could Wag.

Hunger Allows No Choice.

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.

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

All I Have Is A Voice.

In Life The Loser's Score Is Always Zero.

By Mourning Tongues The Death Of The Poet Was Kept From His Poems.

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

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

Music Is The Best Means We Have Of Digesting Time.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The 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.

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.

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

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.

Yet No One Hears His Own Remarks As Prose.

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.

The Americans Are Violently Oral. That's Why In America The Mother Is All-important And The Father Has No Position At All -- Isn't Respected In The Least. Even The American Passion For Laxatives Can Be Explained As An Oral Manifestation. They Want To Get Rid Of Any Unpleasantness Taken In Through The Mouth.

Politics Cannot Be A Science, Because In Politics Theory And Practice Cannot Be Separated, And The Sciences Depend Upon Their Separation.

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

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.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

All Works Of Art Are Commissioned In The Sense That No Artist Can Create One By A Simple Act Of Will But Must Wait Until What He Believes To Be A Good Idea For A Work Comes To Him.

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

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

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

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.

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

Herds Of Reindeer Move Across Miles And Miles Of Golden Moss

Words Are For Those With Promises To Keep.

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

Dance, Dance, Dance Till You Drop.

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.

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

I Said Earlier That I Do Not Believe An Artist's Life Throws Much Light Upon His Works. I Do Believe, However, That, More Often Than Most People Realize, His Works May Throw Light Upon His Life. An Artist With Certain Imaginative Ideas In His Head May Then Involve Himself In Relationships Which Are Congenial To Them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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