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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.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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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.
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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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.
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And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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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.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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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.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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