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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.

-W. H. Auden

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The Americans Are Violently

W. H. Auden

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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.

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

Even The Dreadful Martyrdom Must Run Its Course Anyhow In A Corner, Some Untidy Spot Where The Dogs Go On With Their Doggy Life

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

A Poet Is A Professional Maker Of Verbal Objects.

Dance, Dance, Dance Till You Drop.

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

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

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

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.

Poetry Makes Nothing Happen.

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.

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.

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

Adjectives Are The Potbelly Of Poetry.

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

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

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.

One Rational Voice Is Dumb: Over A Grave The Household Of Impulse Mourns One Dearly Loved. Sad Is Eros, Builder Of Cities, And Weeping Anarchic Aphrodite.

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

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

Sunny Afternoon

May It Not Be That, Just As We Have To Have Faith In Him, God Has To Have Faith In Us And, Considering The History Of The Human Race So Far, May It Not Be That 'faith' Is Even More Difficult For Him Than It Is For Us?

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

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

Funny Friendship

Funny Best Friend

One Of The Most Horrible, Yet Most Important, Discoveries Of Our Age Has Been That, If You Really Wish To Destroy A Person And Turn Him Into An Automaton, The Surest Method Is Not Physical Torture, In The Strict Sense, But Simply To Keep Him Awake, I.e., In An Existential Relation To Life Without Intermission.

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

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.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

Words Have No Word For Words That Are Not True.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It's Usually The Stupid People That Develop Long Illnesses. You Need More Than Indolence And Selfishness, You Need Endurance To Make A Good Patient.

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."

Mad Ireland Hurt You Into Poetry.

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

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

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

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

The Eye Likes Novelty, But The Ear Craves Familiarity.

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

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

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.

Sob, Heavy World Sob As You Spin, Mantled In Mist Remote From The Happy.

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.

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.

If The Most Significant Characteristic Of Man Is The Complex Of Biological Needs He Shares With All Members Of His Species, Then The Best Lives For The Writer To Observe Are Those In Which The Role Of Natural Necessity Is Clearest, Namely, The Lives Of The Very Poor.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Breaking Silence

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.

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

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

We Are Lived By Powers We Pretend To Understand.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Most Difficult Problem In Personal Knowledge, Whether Of Oneself Or Of Others, Is The Problem Of Guessing When To Think As A Historian And When To Think As An Anthropologist.

Personal Knowledge

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

One Can Only Blaspheme If One Believes.

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.

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

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

More Than Meets The Eye

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

We Do Not Change As We Grow Up. The Difference Between The Child And The Adult Is That The Former Doesn't Know Who He Is And The Latter Does.

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

Dogmatic Theological Statements Are Neither Logical Propositions Nor Poetic Utterances. They Are ''shaggy Dog'' Stories; They Have A Point, But He Who Tries Too Hard To Get It Will Miss It.

No Hero Is Mortal Till He Dies.

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.

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.'

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

Routine, In An Intelligent Man, Is A Sign Of Ambition.

Human Language Is Mythological And Metaphorical By Nature.

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.

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

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

We Must Love One Another Or Die

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Image Of Myself Which I Try To Create In My Own Mind In Order That I May Love Myself Is Very Different From The Image Which I Try To Create In The Minds Of Others In Order That They May Love Me.

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.

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

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?

Whatever The Field Under Discussion, Those Who Engage In Debate Must Not Only Believe In Each Other's Good Faith, But Also In Their Capacity To Arrive At The Truth.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A Doctor, Like Anyone Else Who Has To Deal With Human Beings, Each Of Them Unique, Cannot Be A Scientist; He Is Either, Like The Surgeon, A Craftsman, Or, Like The Physician And The Psychologist, An Artist. This Means That In Order To Be A Good Doctor A Man Must Also Have A Good Character, That Is To Say, Whatever Weaknesses And Foibles He May Have, He Must Love His Fellow Human Beings In The Concrete And Desire Their Good Before His Own.

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.

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.

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

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.

To The Man-in-the-street, Who, I'm Sorry To Say, Is A Keen Observer Of Life. The Word Intellectual Suggests Straight Away. A Man Who's Untrue To His Wife.

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.

All I Have Is A Voice.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

Art Is Born Of Humiliation.

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

In Life The Loser's Score Is Always Zero.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

There Are Not Many English Novels Which Deserve To Be Called Great: Parade's End Is One Of Them.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

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

Now Is The Age Of Anxiety.

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.

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

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

Hunger Allows No Choice.

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

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.

Good Can Imagine Evil; But Evil Cannot Imagine Good.

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.

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.

Yet No One Hears His Own Remarks As Prose.

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.

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

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.

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

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

Criticism Should Be A Casual Conversation.

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

Doom Is Dark And Deeper Than Any Sea-dingle.

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.

I Smell Blood And An Era Of Prominent Madmen.

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.

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

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.

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.

All Pity Is Self-pity.

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

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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.

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.

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.

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

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Solange Knowles

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