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The Actors Today Really Need The Whip Hand. They're So Lazy. They Haven't Got The Sense Of Pride In Their Profession That The Less Socially Elevated Musical Comedy And Music Hall People Or Acrobats Have. The Theater Has Never Been Any Good Since The Actors Became Gentlemen.

-W. H. Auden

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The Actors Today Really

W. H. Auden

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The Actors Today Really Need The Whip Hand. They're So Lazy. They Haven't Got The Sense Of Pride In Their Profession That The Less Socially Elevated Musical Comedy And Music Hall People Or Acrobats Have. The Theater Has Never Been Any Good Since The Actors Became Gentlemen.

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

The Masculine Imagination Lives In A State Of Perpetual Revolt Against The Limitations Of Human Life. In Theological Terms, One Might Say That All Men, Left To Themselves, Become Gnostics. They May Swagger Like Peacocks, But In Their Heart Of Hearts They All Think Sex An Indignity And Wish They Could Beget Themselves On Themselves. Hence The Aggressive Hostility Toward Women So Manifest In Most Club-car Stories.

The 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.

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

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

It Has Been Said That A Poem Should Not Mean But Be. This Is Not Quite Accurate. In A Poem, As Distinct From Many Other Kinds Of Verbal Societies, Meaning And Being Are Identical. A Poem Might Be Called A Pseudo-person. Like A Person, It Is Unique And Addresses The Reader Personally. On The Other Hand, Like A Natural Being And Unlike A Historical Person, It Cannot Lie.

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

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.

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.

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.

To Make One, There Must Be Two.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Slogan Of Hell: Eat Or Be Eaten. The Slogan Of Heaven: Eat And Be Eaten.

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.

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.

Hunger Allows No Choice.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Poetry Makes Nothing Happen.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Art Is Born Of Humiliation.

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

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

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

Now Is The Age Of Anxiety.

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

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.

Life Is A Picnic On A Precipice.

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.

Thank God For Books As An Alternative To Conversation.

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.

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.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alone, Alone, About The Dreadful Wood / Of Conscious Evil Runs A Lost Mankind, / Dreading To Find Its Father.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death Is The Sound Of Distant Thunder At A Picnic.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Breaking Silence

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

To Choose What Is Difficult All One's Days, As If It Were Easy, That Is Faith

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 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.'

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

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

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.

A Daydream Is A Meal At Which Images Are Eaten. Some Of Us Are Gourmets, Some Gourmands, And A Good Many Take Their Images Precooked Out Of A Can And Swallow Them Down Whole, Absent-mindedly And With Little Relish.

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

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.

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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

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.

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

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

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.

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

No Being Can Make Another One Happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Adjectives Are The Potbelly Of Poetry.

Blessed Be All Metrical Rules That Forbid Automatic Responses, Force Us To Have Second Thoughts, Free Us From The Fetters Of Self.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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

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 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.

No Poet Or Novelist Wishes He Were The Only One Who Ever Lived, But Most Of Them Wish They Were The Only One Alive, And Quite A Number Fondly Believe Their Wish Has Been Granted.

We Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

Sincerity Is Technique.

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.

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.

Learn From Your Dreams What You Lack.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Those To Whom Evil Is Donedo Evil In Return.

Like Everything Which Is Not The Involuntary Result Of Fleeting Emotion But The Creation Of Time And Will, Any Marriage, Happy Or Unhappy, Is Infinitely More Interesting Than Any Romance, However Passionate.

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.

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

The Actors Today Really Need The Whip Hand. They're So Lazy. They Haven't Got The Sense Of Pride In Their Profession That The Less Socially Elevated Musical Comedy And Music Hall People Or Acrobats Have. The Theater Has Never Been Any Good Since The Actors Became Gentlemen.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

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

We Must Love One Another Or Die

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.

All Pity Is Self-pity.

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

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

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

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.

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

The 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.

Mad Ireland Hurt You Into Poetry.

Doom Is Dark And Deeper Than Any Sea-dingle.

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.

To Ask The Hard Question Is Simple.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

One Cannot Review A Bad Book Without Showing Off.

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

Sunny Afternoon

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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