Quotes from W. H. Auden

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

John D. MacDonald

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

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe but each has to believe by himself.

Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

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.

Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.