H. Auden
H. Auden
discovery wish important
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.
zero winning games
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
sorrow gold mountain
There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
our-world body claims
Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
listening prose remarks
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
suffering criticism ugly
It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
sadness envy no-love
There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
luxury soul stones
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
life hope wish
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
curious genealogy delusion
Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
cooking meteorology would-be
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.
hell
Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
skins disease behind-you
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
motorcycle tables artifacts
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.