How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
W. H. AudenThe basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
W. H. AudenGod may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
W. H. AudenThe true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden