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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.

-W. H. Auden

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The True Men Of

W. H. Auden

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

Goodness Is Easier To Recognize Than To Define.

I Don't Think The Mystical Experience Can Be Verbalized. When The Ego Disappears, So Does Power Over Language.

Mystical Experiences

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Shall Memory Restore The Steps And The Shore, The Face And The Meeting Place.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

All I Have Is A Voice.

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.

A False Enchantment Can All Too Easily Last A Lifetime.

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.

Love Each Other Or Perish.

Love Each Other

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.

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?

To Make One, There Must Be Two.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

One Can Only Blaspheme If One Believes.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Three Wiseman: The Weather Has Been Awful, The Countryside Is Dreary, Marsh, Jungle, Rock; And Echoes Mock, Calling Our Hope Unlawful; But A Silly Song Can Help Along Yours Ever And Sincerely: At Least We Know For Certain That We Are Three Old Sinners, That This Journey Is Much Too Long, That We Want Our Dinners, And Miss Our Wives, Our Books, Our Dogs, But Have Only The Vaguest Idea Why We Are What We Are. To Discover How To Be Human Now Is The Reason We Follow This Star.

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.

Good Can Imagine Evil; But Evil Cannot Imagine Good.

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.

Thank God For Books As An Alternative To Conversation.

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

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

A 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Christ Did Not Enchant Men; He Demanded That They Believe In Him: Except On One Occasion, The Transfiguration. For A Brief While, Peter, James, And John Were Permitted To See Him In His Glory. For That Brief While They Had No Need Of Faith. The Vision Vanished, And The Memory Of It Did Not Prevent Them From All Forsaking Him When He Was Arrested, Or Peter From Denying That He Had Ever Known Him.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Smell Blood And An Era Of Prominent Madmen.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water.

Base Words Are Uttered Only By The Base And Can For Such At Once Be Understood; But Noble Platitudes - Ah, There's A Case Where The Most Careful Scrutiny Is Needed To Tell A Voice That's Genuinely Good From One That's Base But Merely Has Succeeded.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Criticism Should Be A Casual Conversation.

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

Between The Ages Of Twenty And Forty We Are Engaged In The Process Of Discovering Who We Are, Which Involves Learning The Differences Between Accidental Limitations Which It Is Our Duty To Outgrow And The Necessary Limitations Of Our Nature Beyond Which We Cannot Trespass With Impunity.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Child Unlucky In His Little State, Some Hearth Where Freedom Is Excluded, A Hive Whose Honey Is Fear And Worry, Feels Calmer Now And Somehow Assured Of Escape

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

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

A Poet Is A Professional Maker Of Verbal Objects.

Ideally, Government Is The Means By Which All The Individual Wills Are Assured Complete Freedom Of Moral Choice And At The Same Time Prevented From Ever Clashing.

You Owe It To All Of Us All Get On With What You're Good At.

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

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

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.

Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So.

To My Generation No Other English Poet Seemed So Perfectly To Express The Sensibility Of A Male Adolescent. If I Do Not Now Turn To Him Very Often, I Am Eternally Grateful To Him For The Joy He Gave Me In My Youth.

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

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

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 Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

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.

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

He Was My North, My South, My East And West, My Working Week And My Sunday Rest, My Noon, My Midnight, My Talk, My Song; I Thought That Love Would Last Forever: I Was Wrong.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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 Were Put On This Earth To Make Things.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

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

Music Is The Best Means We Have Of Digesting Time.

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

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

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

You Shall Love Your Crooked Neighbour, With Your Crooked Heart.

Herds Of Reindeer Move Across Miles And Miles Of Golden Moss

Almost All Of Our Relationships Begin And Most Of Them Continue As Forms Of Mutual Exploitation, A Mental Or Physical Barter, To Be Terminated When One Or Both Parties Run Out Of Goods.

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.

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.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

Some Books Are Undeservedly Forgotten; None Are Undeservedly Remembered.

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

Sunny Afternoon

At First Critics Classified Authors As Ancients, That Is To Say, Greek And Latin Authors, And Moderns, That Is To Say, Every Post-classical Author. Then They Classified Them By Eras, The Augustans, The Victorians, Etc., And Now They Classify Them By Decades, The Writers Of The '30's, '40's, Etc. Very Soon, It Seems, They Will Be Labeling Authors, Like Automobiles, By The Year.

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.

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?

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

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

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

Before People Complain Of The Obscurity Of Modern Poetry, They Should First Examine Their Consciences And Ask Themselves With How Many People And On How Many Occasions They Have Genuinely And Profoundly Shared Some Experience With Another...

Words Are For Those With Promises To Keep.

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

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

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

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

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

History Marched To The Drums Of A Clear Idea...

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.

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

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

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

Behind The Corpse In The Reservoir, Behind The Ghost On The Links, Behind The Lady Who Dances And The Man Who Madly Drinks, Under The Look Of Fatigue, The Attack Of Migraine And The Sigh There Is Always Another Story, There Is More Than Meets The Eye.

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

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

Art Is Born Of Humiliation.

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.

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

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

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

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Richard John Neuhaus

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