text:
Wikiquote:Welcome, newcomers

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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikiquote:Welcome, newcomers


text:
User:Gaurav

My favourite quotes:
 * "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." -- Anonymous
 * "Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotes to add to Wikiquote

 * http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/377142 -- apparently from doi:10.1023/A:1004616403134 (I read it on pg 215 of "The Species Seekers" by Richard Conniff, ISBN 978-0-393-06854-2)

Homepage:

Wikipedia: User page.

title: User:Gaurav


text:
User:Merphant

See w:User:Merphant

title: User:Merphant


text:
Chief Joseph

Hinmaton-Yalaktit (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt) (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904) was leader of the Nez Perce; most commonly known as Chief Joseph, his Suquamish name means "Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain".

Quotes

 * Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.
 * Speech rejecting the demands that he lead his people onto a reservation. (1876)

 * In the treaty councils the commissioners have claimed that our country had been sold to the Government. Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my horses suit me, I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him: "Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell." My neighbor answers, "Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph's horses." The white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your horses, and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to the Government, this is the way they were bought.
 * Arguing against the right of the US Government to force his people to leave their lands (1876)

 * Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are – perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.
 * Speech in surrendering to General Nelson Appleton Miles after long evading a pursuit nearly to the border of Canada. (October 5, 1877)

Lincoln Hall Speech (1879)

 * Washington DC (14 January 1879)

 * Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble.  Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.  You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.  If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please.  They cannot tell me.

 * I only ask of the Government to be treated as all other men are treated. If I cannot go to my own home, let me have a home in a country where my people will not die so fast.

 * When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.

 * I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

 * Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

 * Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike – brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people. "If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace....Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it....Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade....free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty."

Quotes about Chief Joseph

 * The Nez Perce tribe of Indians, like other tribes too large to be united under one chief, was composed of several bands, each distinct in sovereignty. It was a loose confederacy. Joseph and his people occupied the Imnaha or Grande Ronde valley in Oregon, which was considered perhaps the finest land in that part of the country... When the last treaty was entered into by some of the bands of the Nez Perce, Joseph's band was at Lapwai, Idaho, and had nothing to do with the agreement. The elder chief in dying had counseled his son, then not more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, never to part with their home, assuring him that he had signed no papers. These peaceful non-treaty Indians did not even know what land had been ceded until the agent read them the government order to leave. Of course they refused. You and I would have done the same.
 * When the agent failed to move them, he and the would-be settlers called upon the army to force them to be good, namely, without a murmur to leave their pleasant inheritance in the hands of a crowd of greedy grafters.
 * [General O. O. Howard] had a long council with Joseph and his leading men, telling them they must obey the order or be driven out by force... Joseph was a mere youth without experience in war or public affairs. He now replied in his simple way that neither he nor his father had ever made any treaty disposing of their country, that no other band of the Nez Perces was authorized to speak for them, and it would seem a mighty injustice and unkindness...
 * The whites were unduly impatient to clear the coveted valley, and by their insolence they aggravated to the danger point an already strained situation. The murder of an Indian was the climax... There was nothing for him to do but fight; and then and there began the peaceful Joseph's career as a general of unsurpassed strategy in conducting one of the most masterly retreats in history.
 * The first council of war was a strange business to Joseph. He had only this to say to his people: "I have tried to save you from suffering and sorrow. Resistance means all of that. We are few. They are many. You can see all we have at a glance. They have food and ammunition in abundance. We must suffer great hardship and loss." After this speech, he quietly began his plans for the defense.
 * It is the general belief that Indians are cruel and revengeful, and surely these people had reason to hate the race who had driven them from their homes if any people ever had. ...He told me that he gave strict orders to his men not to kill any women or children. He wished to meet his adversaries according to their own standards of warfare, but he afterward learned that in spite of professions of humanity, white soldiers have not seldom been known to kill women and children indiscriminately.
 * The great Chief Joseph died broken-spirited and broken-hearted. He did not hate the whites, for there was nothing small about him, and when he laid down his weapons he would not fight on with his mind. But he was profoundly disappointed in the claims of a Christian civilization.
 * I call him great because he was simple and honest. Without education or special training he demonstrated his ability to lead and to fight when justice demanded. He outgeneraled the best and most experienced commanders in the army of the United States, although their troops were well provisioned, well armed, and above all unencumbered. He was great finally, because he never boasted of his remarkable feat. I am proud of him, because he was a true American.
 * Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) in Indian Heroes & Great Chieftains (1918)

 * Inspired by the teachings of Smohalla, Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé in Idaho rebelled in 1877. Before he was trapped only thirty miles short of refuge in Canada, he had consistently outwitted and outfought a superior United States Army... although he forbade his warriors to scalp or to torture, the Whites massacred his women and children. Finally, with most of his warriors dead, his people starving, freezing, and maimed, Chief Joseph walked toward the White generals, handed his rifle to them, and said: "I am tired of fighting ... My people ask me for food, and I have none to give. It is cold, and we have no blankets, no wood. My people are starving to death. Where is my little daughter? I do not know ... Hear me, my chiefs. I have fought; but from where the sun now stands, Joseph will fight no more forever."
 * Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

title: Chief Joseph


text:
Sid Meier

Sid Meier (born February 24, 1954) is a renowned programmer and designer of some of the most commercially and critically successful computer games of all time.

Quotes

 * A game is a series of interesting choices.
 * (about early 1980s video game programming)

 * The irony is we thought we were behind the curve, that the industry had already peaked, and we were just trying to catch up.
 *

 * SimCity inspired Civilization in a way. The first prototype of Civilization that I did was a real-time game like SimCity, in that you placed cities and moved things around, but cities grew without you. You basically seeded the world in a kind of SimCity-esque way. Instead of zoning, you seeded things, and you said I want a city over there, and why don't you do some farming over here. What I didn't like in that version of Civilization is that you did a lot more watching than you did playing. So SimCity, Empire, Railroad Tycoon, and the Civilization board game were the different ingredients that we stirred together to get to Civilization.
 * "Sid on Civilization" (2001), Infogrames Interactive, Inc.

title: Sid Meier


text:
Talk:Sid Meier

"Sid Meir" or "Sid Meier" actually ?

The latter. Moved. Nanobug 12:53 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Alpha Centauri quote source
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century..." Did Sid Meier actually say this? Sure, it was in a Sid Meier game, but that doesn't mean Sid Meier wrote those words.

--Furrykef 02:04, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I've moved it to attributed, but it might be best to move it to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. We might never be sure who wrote that line. --Mrwojo 02:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Definitely move it. The "Sid Meier" part of the title is much like the "Tom Clancy" part of the title of a Tom Clancy novel or game.  The name is a brand, but he had little to do with the actual production.  I'd attribute it to Brian Reynolds before Sid Meier, but the truth of the matter is, i don't know who wrote that line, so i agree with the move to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri  --128.143.167.95 14:47, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sid Meier


text:
Talk:Salvador Dalí

Re the madman quote: I seem to remember seeing a documentary called The Essential Dali or something, where he said something like that. But it was more like, "The difference between Dali and the crazy man is that Dali, is not, crazy!". He spoke in English in the third person, with that weird inflection. Maybe he said the quote as it's given on the page, too, but I thought I'd bring it up. -- Merphant
 * the quote is on thinkexist.com but the spam filter won't allow me to cite it!! Chrismorey (talk) 08:18, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Problems
It seems like there are some problems here --Dannycas 00:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * "In le subconscious you fuck ugly people, never beautiful, because la libido always desires something repulsive."
 * "I like it, le murder, because this is courage. It is anti-bourgeois. Le murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming rrrremords de conscience, one prays, one opens le sky, and le angels say, “Good morning!”"

Duplicates
The following quotation appears, in various forms, three times on this page: "Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali." Do we really need all three variations? -- (The writer known on EN as llywrch) 01:08, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Mexico Quote
"No volveré a venir a un país que es mas surrealista que mis pinturas" translated: "I will not go again to a country that is even more surreal than my paintings"

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to.

 * No volveré a venir a un pais que es más surrealista que mis pinturas.
 * I will not return to a country that is more surrealistic than my paintings.
 * Said after visiting Mexico

 * El problema de la juventud de hoy es que uno ya no forma parte de ella.
 * The problem with today's youth is not being a part of it anymore.

 * Muchas personas no cumplen los ochenta porque intentan durante demasiado tiempo quedarse en los cuarenta.
 * Many people do not reach their eighties because they try to stay in their forties too long.

 * Picasso es pintor, yo también; Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
 * Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.

 * Pintar un cuadro es o muy sencillo o imposible.
 * To paint a picture is either very simple or impossible.

 * A los tres años quería ser cocinero. A los cinco quería ser Napoleón. Mi ambición no ha hecho más que crecer ahora sólo quiero ser Salvador Dalí y nada más. Por otra parte, esto es muy difícil, ya que, a medida que me acerco a Salvador Dalí, él se aleja de mí
 * When I was three years old, I wanted to be a cook. When I was five, I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambition has done nothing but grown, and now I only want to be Salvador Dalí and nothing more. On the other hand, this is very difficult, now that, as I approach Salvador Dalí, he gets farther away.

 * I love Gala so much, if she dies I will eat her.he was the best artist in the world.

 * In the pretext of the academic being detestable, the worst in the class was made a hero! He opens the door to the ethics of shit! Newness at whatever cost and art becomes just a latrine!

 * I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful.

 * The difference between Dalí and the crazy man is that Dalí, is not crazy!
 * Variant: The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad. [see here]
 * Alternatively: The difference between me and a madman is the madman thinks that he is sane. I know that I am mad. (as on the wall of the Dalí universe exhibition, london, 2006)

 * What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

 * You have the lips of the pharmacist of Figueres (telling to Mae West and speaking about the pharmacist and philosopher of the history Alexandre Deulofeu).

 * I believe in general in death but in the death of Dali absolutely not. I believe in my death becoming very -- almost impossible.

 * El canibalismo es una de las manifestaciones más evidentes de la ternura.
 * Cannibalism is a sure sign of affection.

 * El que quiere interesar a los demás tiene que provocarlos.
 * He who wishes to interest other people needs to provoke them.

 * ...Es curioso, a mi me interesa mucho mas hablar, o estar en contacto con la gente que piensa lo contrario de lo que yo pienso, que de los que piensan lo mismo que pienso yo.
 * ...It's strange, but I'd much rather talk with or be in touch with people who think the opposite of what I think than with those who think the same as I do.

 * Es fácil reconocer si el hombre tiene gusto: la alfombra debe combinar con las cejas.
 * It's easy to tell if a man has good taste: his carpet should harmonize with his eyebrows.

 * De ninguna manera volveré a México. No soporto estar en un país más surrealista que mis pinturas.
 * Under no circumstances will I return to Mexico. I cannot bear to be in a country more surreal than my own paintings.

 * Hoy, el gusto por el defecto es tal que sólo parecen geniales las imperfecciones y sobre todo la fealdad. Cuando una Venus se parece a un sapo, los seudoestetas contemporáneos exclaman: ¡Es fuerte, es humano!
 * Today, a taste for the defective is so strong that the only things that seem attractive are imperfections and, above all, ugliness. When a Venus looks like a toad, the pseudo-aesthetes of today shout: "That's great, that's human!"

 * La Revolución Rusa es la Revolución Francesa que llega tarde, por culpa del frío.
 * The Russian Revolution is the French Revolution arriving late due to the cold.

 * La única diferencia entre un loco y Dalí, es que Dalí no está loco.
 * The only difference between a madman and Dalí is that Dalí is not mad.

 * La vida es aspirar, respirar y expirar.
 * To live means to aspire, to respire and to expire.

 * Lo importante es que hablen de ti, aunque sea bien.
 * What's important is that people talk about you, even if they only say good things.

 * Lo único de lo que el mundo no se cansará nunca es de la exageración.
 * The only thing the world never tires of is exaggeration.

 * ¡No podéis expulsarme porque Yo soy el Surrealismo!
 * You cannot expel me: I am Surrealism! (After being expelled from the surrealist movement in Paris.)

 * Picasso es pintor. Yo también. Picasso es español. Yo también. Picasso es comunista. Yo tampoco.
 * Picasso is a painter. So am I. Picasso is a Spaniard. So am I. Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

 * Sin una audiencia, sin la presencia de espectadores, estas joyas no alcanzarían la función para la cual fueron creadas. El espectador, por tanto, es el artista final. Su vista, corazón, mente — con una mayor o menor capacidad para entender la intención del creador — da vida a las joyas.
 * Without an audience, without a circle of spectators, these jewels would never realize the purpose for which they were created. The spectator is therefore the final artist. His eyes, his heart, his mind — whether better or worse equipped to understand the purpose of the creator — give life to the jewels.

 * Llamo a mi esposa: Gala, Galuska, Gradiva; Oliva por lo oval de su rostro y el color de su piel; Oliveta, diminutivo de la oliva; y sus delirantes derivados: Oliueta, Oriueta, Buribeta, Buriueteta, Siliueta, Solibubuleta, Oliburibuleta, Ciueta, Liueta. También la llamo Lionette, porque cuando se enfada ruge como el león de la Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
 * I call my wife Gala, Galuska, Gradiva; Oliva for her oval face and the colour of her skin; Oliveta, diminutive of Oliva; and its delirious derivations: Oliueta, Oriueta, Buribeta, Buriueteta, Siliueta, Solibubuleta, Oliburibuleta, Ciueta, Liueta. I also call her Lionette, because when she's angry she roars like the MGM lion.

 * Sólo hay dos cosas malas que pueden pasarte en la vida, ser Pablo Picasso o no ser Salvador Dalí.
 * There are only two things that can go wrong for you in life: being Pablo Picasso or not being Salvador Dalí.

 * Si muero, no moriré del todo.
 * If I die, I will not die completely. (Compare Horace's Non omnis moriar, "I will not wholly die.").

 * La inteligencia sin ambición es un pájaro sin alas.
 * Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

 * No tengas miedo de la perfección, nunca la alcanzarás.
 * Don't be afraid of perfection, because you'll never achieve it.

 * Para comprar mis cuadros hay que ser criminalmente rico como los norteamericanos.
 * To buy my paintings you have to be criminally rich like the Americans.

 * Hay días en que pienso que voy a morir de una sobredosis de satisfacción.
 * There are days when I think that I will die of an overdose of satisfaction.

 * El termómetro del éxito no es más que la envidia de los descontentos.
 * The thermometer of success is nothing more than the envy of the discontent.

 * Lo menos que puede pedirse a una escultura es que no se mueva.
 * The least that one can ask of a sculpture is that it stays still.

 * Mientras estamos dormidos en este mundo, estamos despiertos en el otro.
 * When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.

 * Los que no quieren imitar nada, no producen nada.
 * Those who refuse to imitate will never create.

 * Las guerras nunca han hecho daño a nadie, excepto a la gente que muere.
 * Wars have never done harm to anyone, except to those who die.

 * Gustar el dinero como me gusta, es nada menos que misticismo. El dinero es una gloria.
 * To relish money as I do is nothing short of mysticism. Money is a glory.

 * La existencia de la realidad es la cosa más misteriosa, más sublime y más surrealista que se dé.
 * The existence of reality is the most mysterious, most sublime and most surrealist thing of all.

Quotes from The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (Dali, 1942, Trans. Haakon Chevalier)
''I'm just dropping some quotes here as I read through the book. At a later date, I will go through and judge if any are worthy of inclusion on the main-namespace page.'' 142.25.33.124 03:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

P1: "At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon.  And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

P4: "One single being has reached a plane of life whose image is comparable to the serene perfections of the Renaissance, and this being happens to be precisely Gala, my wife, whom I had the miracle to choose. She is composed of those fleeting attitudes, of those Ninth-Symphony-like facial expressions, which, reflecting the architectonic contours of a perfect soul, become crystallized on the very shore line of the flesh, at the skin's surface, in the sea foam of the hierarchies of her own life, and which, having been classified, clarified by the most delicate breezes of the sentiments, harden, are organized, and become architecture in flesh and bone.  And for this reason I can say of Gala seated that she resembles perfectly, that she is posed with the same grace as, Il Tempietto di Bramante near the church of San Pietro in Montorio at Rome; for, like Stendhal in the Vatican, I too can measure exactly the slim columns of her pride, the tender and stubborn banisters of her childhood, the divine stairways of her smile."

P6: "One thing, at least, is certain: everything, absolutely everything, that I shall say here is entirely and exclusively my own fault."

To add more later....

P7: "Fortunately I am not one of those beings who when they smile are apt to expose remnants, however small, of horrible and degrading spinach clinging to their teeth. This is not because I brush my teeth better than others; it is due to the much more categorical fact that I do not eat spinach.  It so happens that I attach to spinach, as to everything more or less directly pertaining to food, essential values of a moral and esthetic order.  And of course the sentinel of disgust is ever on hand, vigilant and full of severe solicitude, ceremoniously attentive to the exacting choice of my foods." (I like to eat only things with well-defined shapes that the intelligence can grasp. I detest spinach because of its utterly amorphous character, so much that I am firmly convinced, and do not hesitate for a moment to maintain, that the only good, noble and edible thing to be found in that sordid nourishment is the sand.)

''Damn. This whole work is wholly brilliant. I do not think I can be trusted to the process of picking terse and appropriate quotes, as I seem to want to transcribe the whole body of the work....''

title: Talk:Salvador Dalí


text:
Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is a mathematician, cognitive scientist, and Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Quotes

 * Irrationality is the square root of all evil.
 * "Irrationality is the Square Root of All Evil" (Sep, 1983) Scientific American 249 (3) article reprinted in Metamagical Themas (1985)

 * Which statement seems more true: (1) I have a brain. (2) I am a brain.
 * The Mind's I with Daniel C. Dennett (1981)

 * In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.
 * Metamagical Themas (1985)

 * The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps.
 * Le Ton beau de Marot (1997) chapter 8 p. 234

 * Solomon: Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence. Hofstadter: I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me. Solomon: So fix it. Hofstadter: The next day someone will fix it back.
 * Quoted in Deborah Solomon, "The Mind Reader," New York Times (2007-04-01)

 * If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false.
 * I Am a Strange Loop (2007) p. 68

 * I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job (and the same holds, of course, for many composers). I personally don't have any thoughts about "shooting for immortality" when I write. I try to write simply in order to get ideas out there that I believe in and find fascinating, because I'd like to let other people be able share those ideas. But intellectual ideas alone, no matter how fascinating they are, are not enough to transmit a soul across brains. Perhaps, as I say, my autobiographical passages — at least some of them — get tiny shards of my soul across to some people. But such autobiographical story-telling is not nearly as effective a means of soul-transmission as is living with someone you love for many years of your lives, and sharing profound life goals with them — that's for sure!
 * Originally published, in Hebrew, in the online culture magazine "Haayal Hakore". (September 2007)

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

 * The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.
 * "Introduction: A Musico-Logical Offering"

 * The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
 * "Recursive Structures and Processes"

 * Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. … Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories … human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon—which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.
 * Chapter 9: "Mumon and Gödel"

 * Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths.
 * Chapter 9: "Mumon and Gödel"

 * Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level
 * Chapter 20: "Strange Loops Or Tangled Hierarchies"

 * No reference is truly direct—every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.
 * "Six-Part Ricercar"

 * One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.

 * This type of paradox is quite characteristic of Zen. It is an attempt to "break the mind of logic".
 * This statement refers to a koan

 * Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

 * Reality includes creating every real connection and reference.

title: Douglas Hofstadter


text:
W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an Anglo-American poet known for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.

Quotations

What's the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
 * Put the car away; when life fails
 * It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

The simple act of the confused will.
 * To ask the hard question is simple,
 * To Ask the Hard Question is Simple, first published in book form in Poems (1930)

The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.
 * Let us honour if we can
 * Dedication to Christopher Isherwood, Poems (1930)

With my personal relations. They are not deep And they are not cheap.
 * I am beginning to lose patience
 * Case Histories (1930)

The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea.
 * Look, stranger, on this island now
 * Look, Stranger, on This Island Now (1936), first published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)

My nose is not too bad, but isn’t straight; I have no proper eyebrows, and my eyes Are far too close together to look nice.
 * My head looks an egg upon a plate,
 * "Letter to Lord Byron" (1936)

Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
 * Acts of injustice done
 * The Ascent of F6, written with Christopher Isherwood, Act II, Scene V; quoted by Richard Adams in his novel Watership Down. (1936)

Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral; But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie: Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.
 * Lay your sleeping head, my love
 * Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
 * When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
 * Epitaph on a Tyrant (1939), lines 5–6

And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
 * Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
 * In Memory of Sigmund Freud (1939), lines 111–112

And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
 * Base words are uttered only by the base
 * Base words are uttered (1940), lines 1–5

Little birds with scarlet legs Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.
 * Unendowed with wealth or pity,
 * The Fall of Rome (1947), lines 21–28

Attacked mystery ; the packed galleries roared And history marched to the drums of a clear idea, The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire, Quick to tire.
 * In a national capital Mirabeau and his set
 * Memorial for the City (1947)

 * A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
 * Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170

 * Before 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; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.
 * The Dyer's Hand (1955), in the BBC weekly The Listener (30 June 1955)

With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
 * How should we like it were stars to burn
 * The More Loving One (1957)

But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
 * Marriage is rarely bliss
 * After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics (1961), lines 9–16

like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic.
 * Thoughts of his own death,
 * Marginalia (1965–1968)

Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
 * The Ogre does what ogres can,
 * "August 1968"

Autumn Song (1936)
Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
 * Now the leaves are falling fast,
 * Lines 1–4

Lifts the mountain's lovely head Whose white waterfall could bless Travellers in their last distress.
 * Cold, impossible, ahead
 * Lines 17–20
 * First published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)

Funeral Blues (1936)

 * First version written 1936, final version 1938; also known as "Stop all the clocks" - Full text online

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Spain (1937)

 * Written March 1937

Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene. Descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."
 * And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
 * Lines 33–44

Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army.'''
 * On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
 * Lines 65–76

The photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle. To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.
 * To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
 * Lines 81–92

We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
 * The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
 * Lines 101–104

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

 * Written November 1937

Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
 * I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead.'
 * 'O plunge your hands in water,
 * Lines 37–44

Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)

 * Written December 1938

The Old Masters.
 * About suffering they were never wrong,
 * Lines 1–2

That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
 * They never forgot
 * Lines 9–13

In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1939)

 * Written February 1939

The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs. The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections; To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.
 * By mourning tongues
 * Lines 10–23

To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountains start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
 * Follow, poet, follow right
 * Lines 66–77

September 1, 1939 (1939)

 * Written September 1939

On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
 * I sit in one of the dives
 * Lines 1–11

What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
 * I and the public know
 * Lines 19–22

Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
 * Into this neutral air
 * Lines 34–39

Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish.
 * The windiest militant trash
 * Lines 56–58

Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.
 * For the error bred in the bone
 * Lines 62–66

To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
 * All I have is a voice
 * Lines 78–88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.

Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
 * Defenceless under the night
 * Lines 89–99

The Age of Anxiety (1948)
Consider rather the incessant Now of The traveler through time, his tired mind Biased towards bigness since his body must Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope...
 * Let us then
 * Prologue

We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.'''
 * '''We would rather be ruined than changed
 * Epilogue

The Shield of Achilles (1952)

Without expression, waiting for a sign.
 * A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed...
 * Out of the air a voice without a face

Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.
 * A crowd of ordinary decent folk

That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.
 * The mass and majesty of this world, all

Loitered about that vacancy: a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept Or one could weep because another wept.
 * A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
 * The thin-lipped armorer,

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

 * Vintage, ISBN 0-679-72484-2

 * The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
 * "Reading", p. 6

 * In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.
 * "Reading", p. 9

 * Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
 * "Reading", p. 10

 * One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
 * "Reading", p. 11

 * At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.
 * "Reading", p. 12

 * No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
 * "Writing", p. 14

 * In the course of many centuries a few laborsaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand.
 * "Writing", p. 17

 * The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
 * "Writing", p. 22

 * The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."
 * "Writing", p. 27

 * Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
 * "The Virgin & The Dynamo", p. 62

 * 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.
 * "The Poet & The City", p. 81

 * What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.
 * "The Poet & The City", p. 83 (frequently misquoted, with Auden's "offer" mistakenly copied as "offers")

 * All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
 * "The Poet & The City", p. 84

 * Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
 * "Hic et Ille", p. 96

 * When I consider others I can easily believe that their bodies express their personalities and that the two are inseparable. But it is impossible for me not to feel that my body is other than I, that I inhabit it like a house, and that my face is a mask which, with or without my consent, conceals my real nature from others.
 * "Hic et Ille", p. 104

 * The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
 * "Hic et Ille", p. 104

 * Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
 * "Hic et Ille", p. 105

 * To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.
 * "The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157

 * The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
 * "The Prince's Dog", p. 201

 * All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."
 * "Interlude: West's Disease", p. 241

 * All pity is self-pity.
 * "Interlude: West's Disease", p. 243

 * In societies with fewer opportunities for amusement, it was also easier to tell a mere wish from a real desire. If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, "I should like to hear some music," mean what they appear to mean, or merely, "At this moment I should like to forget myself." When all he has to do is press a switch, it is more difficult. He may easily come to believe that wishes can come true.
 * Interlude: West's Disease", p. 245

 * To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
 * "American Poetry", p. 367

 * Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
 * "Notes on the Comic", p. 372

 * A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
 * "Don Juan", p. 403

 * Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject.
 * "Genius & Apostle", p. 435

 * When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
 * "Postscript: Christianity & Art", p. 461

 * No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
 * "Notes on Music and Opera", p. 472

Moon Landing (1969)

 * Written August 1969

 * A grand gesture. But what does it period?
 * What does it osse? We were always adroiter
 * with objects than lives, and more facile
 * at courage than kindness: from the moment

a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's, still don't fit us exactly, modern only in this—our lack of decorum.
 * the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
 * Lines 10–16

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

 * Viking Press, 1st edition, ISBN 0-670-20994-5

 * Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
 * "Tyranny”

 * All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
 * "Hell"

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

 * Vintage Books, ISBN 0-394-71887-9

 * A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
 * "The Greeks and Us", p. 15

 * The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
 * "The Greeks and Us", p. 21

Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i.e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
 * Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
 * Assessing St. Augustine's perspectives in "Augustus to Augustine", p. 37

 * The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
 * "The Protestant Mystics", p. 51

 * Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
 * "The Protestant Mystics", p. 52

 * The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob. A woman might spend twenty years nursing lepers without having any notice taken of her, but let her once exhibit the stigmata or live for long periods on nothing but the Host and water, and in no time the crowd will be clamoring for her beatification.
 * "The Protestant Mystics", p. 72

 * In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.
 * "The Protestant Mystics", p. 73

 * He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.
 * On Søren Kierkegaard, in "A Knight of Doleful Countenance", p. 192

 * I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
 * "The Greatest of the Monsters", p. 247

 * A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.
 * "A Poet of the Actual", p. 265

 * Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
 * "A Poet of the Actual", p. 266

 * Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide.
 * "A Russian Aesthete", p. 279

The virtue of patriotism has been extolled most loudly and publicly by nations that are in the process of conquering others, by the Roman, for example, in the first century B.C., the French in the 1790s, the English in the nineteenth century, and the Germans in the first half of the twentieth. To such people, love of one's country involves denying the right of others, of the Gauls, the Italians, the Indians, the Poles, to love theirs.
 * In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.
 * "C.P. Cavafy", p. 341

 * Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
 * "Un Homme d'Esprit", p. 361

 * Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
 * "One of the Family", p. 369

 * Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary.
 * "Walter de la Mare", p. 393

 * In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
 * "Lame Shadows", p. 410

 * It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
 * "Markings", p. 438

 * In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.
 * "The Justice of Dame Kind", p. 464

 * One can only blaspheme if one believes.
 * "Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472

 * Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
 * "As It Seemed to Us", p. 498

Paris Review interview (1972)

 * 1972 interview in Paris Review "Writers at Work" interviews, 4th series [ISBN 0-14-00-4543-0], p. 247

 * Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism.
 * p. 247

 * It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."
 * p. 250

 * A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
 * p. 251

 * I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn't like slavish devotion — then she lies.
 * p. 254

 * I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
 * p. 266

Paul Bunyan
America is what you do, America is I and you, America is what you choose to make it.
 * Every day America's destroyed and re-created,

Reported quotations

 * A real book reads us.
 * Reported by Lionel Trilling in "On the Modern Element in Modern Literature", Partisan Review, January-February 1961, p. 15 (reprinted in Trilling's Beyond Culture, 1965): Trilling wrote: "taking the cue of W. H. Auden's remark that a real book reads us, I have been read by Eliot's poems...".
 * More commonly reported as "a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us". This paraphrase of Trilling's reported quotation first appeared in a review by Robie Macauley of Trilling's Beyond Culture in the New York Times Book Review, 14 November 1965, p. 38: "I must borrow a phrase from Mr. Trilling (who borrows it from W. H. Auden): a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us." The same version, attributed to Auden, appears in Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1968), p. 87 (with a comma after "we read"). There is no evidence that Auden ever wrote or said this version of the phrase.
 * Other variations (e.g. "not one that's read" for "not one that we read") seem to be misrecollections of Robie Macaulay's paraphrase.

Misattributed

 * Now is the age of anxiety.
 * Widely attributed online to Auden, this phrase does not occur anywhere in his writings. It is apparently a confused recollection of the title of his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). (The phrase "age of anxiety" occurs only in the title of the poem, not in the text, nor in anything else by Auden.)

 * We are all on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for, I can't imagine.
 * Often cited as by Auden without attribution, this quotation has been traced to John Foster Hall (1867-1945), an English comedian known as the Reverend Vivian Foster, Vicar of Mirth. Full history with sound recording

 * A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
 * Often attributed to Auden, but he was repeating an anonymous joke; he did not claim to have originated it. See "Who Wrote Auden's Definition of a Professor?"

The reason for this we need not discuss.
 * Minus times minus equals plus,
 * As stated in "The Poet Himself" by Paul Fussell, in The New York Times (4 October 1981), these lines were a "math mnemonic" which Auden "had to memorize as a child."

 * Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
 * A quotation from Igor Stravinsky, not Auden. Cited as Auden's through a misreading of a paragraph in Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, by Robert Craft (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 6. (The antecedent of "he" is unmistakably "Mr. S." in Craft's sentence: "He also makes a marvelous remark to the effect that 'Music is the best means we have of digesting time'"; and in the sentence that follows "he" is again Stravinsky, not Auden.)

 * Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
 * A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)

 * No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
 * Not by Auden; sources from the 1980s attribute it to the Rev. W. A. Nance (the name seems to have been confused with Auden's).

 * Water is the soul of the earth.
 * Not by Auden; an unverified online source attributes it to the nineteenth-century poet Lucy Larcom:

Quotes about Auden

 * In a century of the symbolist, surreal , and absurd , W. H. Auden is essentially a poet of the reasonable.
 * James D. Brophy, W. H. Auden, Columbia University Press, 1970. Quoted in Pepper, Frank S., Dictionary of Biographical Quotations, Sphere Reference, 1985, (p.20)

 * Spain is a hundred line poem from Auden; it is good medium Auden in a good cause — the Spanish Medical Aid. The Marxian theory of history does not go very happily into verse, but the conclusion is very fine.
 * Cyril Connolly, "To-Day the Struggle", in New Statesman & Nation, 5th June 1937. Reprinted in Valentine Cunningham, Spanish Front : Writers on the Civil War. Oxford University Press, 1986 (p.325).

 * The poet Auden said, "Thousands have lived without love; none without water." Ninety-seven percent of Earth's water is ocean. No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
 * Sylvia Earle "My wish: Protect our oceans" (2009 TED talk)

 * Auden is something of an intellectual jackdaw, picking up bright pebbles of ideas so as to fit them into exciting conceptual patterns.
 * Richard Hoggart, W. H. Auden. British Council and the National Book League (p. 8). Also quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 (p.36).

 * W.H. Auden's poem, Spain, is fit to stand beside great predecessors in its moving, yet serene expression of contemporary feeling towards the heart-rending events of the political world. The theme of the poem lies in the comparison between the secular achievements of the past and the hope which is possible for the future with the horrors of the present and the sacrifices which perhaps it demands from those of this generation who think and feel rightly.
 * John Maynard Keynes, "British Foreign Policy", New Statesman, 10th July 1937. Reprinted in Stephen Howe, Lines of dissent: writings from the New statesman, 1913-1988, Verso Books, 1988.

 * As the poet W. H. Auden wrote: "Truth, like love and sleep, resents/Approaches that are too intense." I call this Auden's rule
 * Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

 * He is all ice and woodenfaced acrobatics.
 * Wyndham Lewis on Auden, in Blasting and Bombardiering, 1937. Also quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 (p.37).

 * Wystan Auden read us some of his new poem in the evening...I follow Auden in his derision of patriotism, class distinctions, comfort, and all the ineptitudes of the middle-classes. But when he also derides the other soft little harmless things which make my life comfortable, I feel a chill autumn wind. I feel that were I a communist the type of person whom I should most wish to attack would not be the millionaire or the imperialist, but the soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectuals like Vita and myself. A man like Auden with his fierce repudiation of half-way houses and his gentle integrity makes one feel terribly discontented with one’s own smug successfulness. I go to bed feeling terribly Edwardian and back-number, and yet, thank God, delighted that people like Wystan Auden should actually exist.
 * Harold Nicholson, Diary, 4th August 1933. Quoted in Wintle, Justin, and Kenin, Richard, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 (p.37). Also quoted in Winstone, Ruth, Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain 1921-2010, Profile Books, 2012.

 * I really wrote in his (Auden's) style. I was crazy about him. I loved his poems so much that I was using this British language all the time—I was saying trousers and subaltern and things like that. You understand I was a Bronx kid. We went through a few poems, and he kept asking me, do you really talk like that? And I kept saying, Oh yeah, well, sometimes. That was the great thing I learned from Auden: that you’d better talk your own language. Then I asked him what young writers now ask me—and I always tell them this story—I said to Auden, Well, do you think I should keep writing? He laughed and then became very solemn. If you’re a writer, he said, you’ll keep writing no matter what. That’s not a question a writer should ask. Something like that, not exactly, but close.
 * Grace Paley, Interview with The Paris Review (1992)

 * he proclaimed so diminished a scope for poetry, including mine. I had little use for his beginnings and middles. Yet he was one of the masters.
 * Adrienne Rich What Is Found There (2003)

 * Muriel Rukeyser was a breakaway from the irony and fatalism of modernists like Eliot and Auden.
 * Adrienne Rich A Human Eye (2009)

 * In terms of English and American poets, it would be quite just to call this The Age of Auden. Not only because Auden was such a dominant and successful poet, but because he went through all the contradictory ideological phases, from Marx to God. He really is representative in that sense.
 * Karl Shapiro, in "Karl Shapiro, The Art of Poetry No. 36", interviewed by Robert Phillips in Paris Review No. 99 (Spring 1986)

 * I sometimes think of Auden's poetry as a hygiene, a knowledge and practice, based on a brilliantly prejudiced analysis of contemporary disorders, relating to the preservation and promotion of health, a sanitary science and a flusher of melancholies. I sometimes think of his poetry as a great war, admire intensely the mature, religious, and logical fighter, and deprecate the boy bushranger.
 * Dylan Thomas, New Verse magazine, November 1937. Also quoted in Skelton, Robin, Poetry of the Thirties, Penguin Books, 1963, and Hampson, Robert, and Barry, Peter, New British Poetries :The Scope of the Possible, Manchester University Press, 1995.

title: W. H. Auden