Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
W. H. AudenGenealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
W. H. AudenAnyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
W. H. AudenBefore 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...
W. H. AudenYou need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
W. H. Auden