Great Throughts Treasury

"Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest."

"Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell."

"Music is the best means we have of digesting time."

"My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth."

"My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain."

"Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading."

"Nature and Passion are powerful, but they are also full of grief. True happiness would have the calm and order of bourgeois routine without its utilitarian ignobility and boredom."

"No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

"No hero is mortal till he dies."

"No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games."

"No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

"No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it."

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

"Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice."

"Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire."

"Noises at dawn will bring freedom for some, but not this peace. No bird can contradict."

"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."

"Nothing? Nothing is the answer."

"Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, for poetry makes nothing happen."

"Now is the age of anxiety."

"Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse’s flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling on."

"O dear white children casual as birds, playing among the ruined languages, so small beside their large confusing words, so gay against the greater silences of dreadful things you did…"

"O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges to dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma."

"O plunge your hands in water, 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 stand, stand at the window as the tears scald and start; you shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart."

"O tell me the truth about love!"

"Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist."

"Of course, behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public."

"Oh dear white children, casual as birds, playing among the ruined languages, so small beside their large confusing words."

"On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot 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."

"One can only blaspheme if one believes."

"One cannot review a bad book without showing off."

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

"One rational voice is dumb: over a grave the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, and weeping anarchic Aphrodite."

"One tapped my shoulder and asked me `How did you fall, sir?' / Whereat I awakened."

"Only those in the last stage of disease could believe that children are true judges of character."

"Or tread in the bus on my toes?"

"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."

"Our researchers into Public Opinion are content that he held the proper opinions for the time of year; when there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went."

"Out of the air a voice without a face 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."

"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."

"Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence; Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to express my deep abhorrence if I caught anyone preferring Art To Life and Love and being Pure-in-heart. I lived with crooks but seldom was molested; The Pure-in-heart can never be arrested."

"Parted the coarse hanged soldier from the don."

"People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay."

"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."

"Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible."

"Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings."

"Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying."

"Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings."

"Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction."