W H Davies Quotes

What is this life so full of care,
We don't have time to stand and stare. ~ W.H. Davies

The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him. ~ W.H. Davies

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began. ~ W.H. Davies

Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink. ~ W.H. Davies

Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this month of May;
And sit beneath the trees, and share
My bread with birds whose homes are there;
While cows lie down to eat, and sheep
Stand to their necks in grass so deep;
While birds do sing with all their might,
As though they felt the earth in flight. ~ W.H. Davies

After hearing an answer, I drew in the chloroform in long breaths, thinking to assist the doctors in their work. In spite of this, I have a faint recollection of struggling with all my might against its effects, previous to losing consciousness; but I was greatly surprised on being afterwards told that I had, when in that condition, used more foul language in ten minutes delirium than had probably been used in twenty four hours by the whole population of Canada. ~ W.H. Davies

It was the rainbow gave thee birth, and left thee all her lovely hues. ~ W.H. Davies

But cats to me are strange, so strange I cannot sleep if one is near. ~ W.H. Davies

This man has talent, that man genius
And here's the strange and cruel difference:
Talent gives pence and his reward is gold,
Genius gives gold and gets no more than pence. ~ W.H. Davies

As long as I love Beauty I am young. ~ W.H. Davies

What is this life if full of care? We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows, no time to see, when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass, no time to see, in broad daylight, streams full of stars, like skies at night, no time to turn at Beauty's glance and watch her feet and how they can dance, no time to wait till her mouth can enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. ~ W.H. Davies

Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day And dances by false glare at night; But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves To spread its wings in Nature's light. ~ W.H. Davies

What sweet, what happy days had I,When dreams made Time Eternity! ~ W.H. Davies

And hear the pleasant cockoo, loud and long - The simple bird that thinks two notes a song. ~ W.H. Davies

Only as I am, can I love you as you are ~ Sheridan Hay Originally From W. H. Auden

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die. ~ W. H. Auden

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing. ~ W. H. Auden

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill. ~ W. H. Auden

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears. ~ W. H. Auden

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy? ~ W. H. Auden

Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size. ~ W. H. Auden

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories. ~ W. H. Auden

Long ago the accusations had begun,
And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged ~ W. H. Auden

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease. ~ W. H. Auden

The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake; ~ W. H. Auden

Boys are always inarticulate where their deepest feelings are concerned; however much they may desire it they cannot express kind and sympathetic feelings. ~ W.H. Hudson

Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was. ~ W. H. Auden

Have so many merry little pots bubbling away in the fire of my enthusiasm: Myron, future trips, modern poetry, Yeats, Sitwell, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, villanelles, maybe Mlle, maybe The New Yorker or The Atlantic (poems sent out make blind hope spring eternal - even if rejections are immanent), spring: biking, breathing, sunning, tanning. All so lovely and potential. ~ Sylvia Plath

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. ~ W. H. Auden

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. ~ W. H. Auden

Love is a funny word. We use it so much that we seem to forget its meaning. We say we love objects, seasons, times of day, movies, TV shows, and everything. And we use this same word to describe people. We say we love our parents, our friends, our family. It's one of the most used words in the English language, but it remains special. Love is different like that. You can use it to talk about anything, but when you find that one person that you know you want to spend the rest of your life with, love is completely new. And saying, "I love you" becomes the best sound you could ever say or hear. Love grows and changes with us, it is just as alive as those who use it. So love as much as you want! Because love will always find a way to be new. ~ H.W.

Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit. ~ W. H. Auden

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. ~ W. H. Auden

love should be like water...it must flow freely...easily ~ W.H. Penewit

Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end. ~ W. H. Auden

Happiness is estentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly. ~ W.H. Sheldon

Like everyone else, I have my black list of unfavorite authors and critics, and among intimate friends I sometimes say exactly what I think of them, but I have the feeling that to express my opinions publicly would be in bad taste, that, to people whom one does not know personally, one should speak only of the authors and critics one is fond of. I find reading savage reviews like reading pornography; though I often enjoy them, I feel a bit ashamed of myself for doing so. Still, I must admit that I find Nietzsche's list of his "impracticals" great fun. ~ W. H. Auden

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science. ~ W. H. Auden

You 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

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ. ~ W. H. Auden

We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy. ~ Kathleen Norris

In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required. ~ W. H. Auden

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith ~ W. H. Auden

As writing is one of the desperate professions, it has universal appeal, especially for those not engaged in it. ~ W. H. Auden

We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is
beyond me. ~ W. H. Auden

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, "God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good" ... She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me ... I threw away gold. That's a fact. That's a natural fact. ~ Stephen Adly Guirgis

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) ~ W. H. Auden

It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize. ~ W. H. Auden

Criticism should be a casual conversation. ~ W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues

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.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

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 forever: 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 wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. ~ W. H. Auden

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless. ~ W. H. Auden

Grandma smiled brightly. "How lovely! It seems your whore has arrived."
Jake groaned and covered his face with his hands. There was no way out of it. His grandmother was going to get him shot.
A&E women scorned, here I come.
"Excuse me?" Aileen put her hands on her hips and did a weird head nod at Grandma, and nearly teetered off her high heels. Oh, this wasn't good. Not good at all.
Grandma reached out and patted Aileen's arm. "Sweetheart, I'm the one with hearing aids, not you. I called you a whore. Would you like me to spell it for you, too?" She nudged Jake. "What did you do? Find her at a high school career fair?" And then in a horrifyingly loud voice she began spelling. "W-H-O-R-E. ~ Rachel Van Dyken

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. ~ W. H. Auden

Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does. ~ W. H. Auden

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons. ~ W. H. Auden

Proper names are poetry in the raw.
Like all poetry they are untranslatable. ~ W. H. Auden

Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling. ~ W. H. Auden

The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets. ~ W. H. Auden

One cannot review a bad book without showing off. ~ W. H. Auden