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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.

-W. H. Auden

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The Primary Function Of

W. H. Auden

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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.

We Must Love One Another Or Die

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Herds Of Reindeer Move Across Miles And Miles Of Golden Moss

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.

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

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

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.

Man Desires To Be Free And He Desires To Feel Important. This Places Him In A Dilemma, For The More He Emancipates Himself From Necessity The Less Important He Feels.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A Man Has His Distinctive Personal Scent Which His Wife, His Children And His Dog Can Recognize. A Crowd Has A Generalized Stink. The Public Is Odorless.

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

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.

As A Poet, There Is Only One Political Duty, And That Is To Defend One's Language From Corruption.

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

Swans In The Winter Air A White Perfection Have

Money Is The Necessity That Frees Us From Necessity.

All Pity Is Self-pity.

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

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

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

To Ask The Hard Question Is Simple.

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.

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.

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.

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

A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods

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

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

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

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

All Sins Tend To Be Addictive, And The Terminal Point Of Addiction Is Damnation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

Intellectual Disgrace Stares From Every Human Face, And The Seas Of Pity Lie Locked And Frozen In Each Eye.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

Left To Itself The Masculine Imagination Has Very Little Appreciation For The Here And Now; It Prefers To Dwell On What Is Absent, On What Has Been Or May Be. If Men Are More Punctual Than Women, It Is Because They Know That, Without The External Discipline Of Clock Time, They Would Never Get Anything Done.

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.

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.

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

The Only Reason The Protestants And Catholics Have Given Up The Idea Of Universal Domination Is Because They've Realised They Can't Get Away With It.

Caesar's Double-bed Is Warm As An Unimportant Clerk Writes I Do Not Like My Work On A Pink Official Form.

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.

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

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

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

Adjectives Are The Potbelly Of Poetry.

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.

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.

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

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.

No Hero Is Mortal Till He Dies.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Sincerity Is Technique.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

I And The Public Know What All Schoolchildren Learn, Those To Whom Evil Is Done Do Evil In Return.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

A Small Grove Massacred To The Last Ash, An Oak With Heart-rot, Give Away The Show: This Great Society Is Going To Smash; They Cannot Fool Us With How Fast They Go, How Much They Cost Each Other And The Gods. A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods.

Death Is The Sound Of Distant Thunder At A Picnic.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

More Than Meets The Eye

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

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

Music Is The Best Means We Have Of Digesting Time.

Words Are For Those With Promises To Keep.

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

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.

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

In Life The Loser's Score Is Always Zero.

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.

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.

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

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

Sunny Afternoon

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.

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.

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

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

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

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Funny Basketball

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

Drama Is Based On The Mistake. I Think Someone Is My Friend When He Really Is My Enemy, That I Am Free To Marry A Woman When In Fact She Is My Mother, That This Person Is A Chambermaid When It Is A Young Nobleman In Disguise, That This Well-dressed Young Man Is Rich When He Is Really A Penniless Adventurer, Or That If I Do This Such And Such A Result Will Follow When In Fact It Results In Something Very Different. All Good Drama Has Two Movements, First The Making Of The Mistake, Then The Discovery That It Was A Mistake.

Human Language Is Mythological And Metaphorical By Nature.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Art Is Born Of Humiliation.

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

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