W H Auden quotes

" No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. " # Opera # Music # Love

" Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility -- the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past. " # Faces # America # Memory

" One cannot review a bad book without showing off. " # Books - Reading

" What is this life if, so full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. " # Life and Living # Writers and Writing # Time and Time Management

" A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. " # Teachers and Teaching # Literature # Books - Reading

" Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. " # Books - Reading

" A thick head can do as much damage as a hard heart. " # Heart # Politicians and Politics # Books - Reading

" 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. " # God # Freedom # Power

" Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. " # Upbringing # Dance and Dancing # Children

" A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. " # Books - Reading