H. Auden
H. Auden
helping-others men earth
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.
rivers mourning tongue
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.
poet happens
Poetry makes nothing happen.
mistake gone mets
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake;
civilization greek conscious
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
zero losing loser
In life the loser's score is always zero.
suffering masters
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
helping-others earth helping
We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
time told-you-so
Time will say nothing but I told you so...
appreciation men imagination
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.
writing intelligent doe
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.
sorry maturity years
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.
suffering sorrow eating
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.
fairy-tale tales hunts
To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.