#th

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#anything #because #bores #down #else

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#any #creation #emotion #everything #fleeting

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it. ↗

— Russell Baker

#anticipating #carrying #hare #heavy #little

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. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#been #believe #ever #fondly #granted

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. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#ask #before #complain #consciences #examine

By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions. ↗

— Norman Ralph Augustine

#asking #by the time #doing #lost #people

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#cannot #factory #feel #hell #through

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. ↗

— John James Audubon

#cared #cares #drawing #every #fishing

I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds. ↗

— John James Audubon

#aware #better #birds #english #habits

If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America. ↗

— John James Audubon

#again #although #america #beloved #bodies