"Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
17 fans of this quote   

"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."

Auden, W. H. on smells   

"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."

Auden, W. H. on writers and writing
4 fans of this quote   

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."

Auden, W. H. on writers and writing
8 fans of this quote   

"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. [Mark 9:23]"

Bible on faith
6 fans of this quote   

"According to your faith; be it done unto you."

Bible on faith
8 fans of this quote   

"All things are possible to him who believes. [Mark 9:23]"

Bible on faith
21 fans of this quote   

"I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind."

Bernard, St. on faith
10 fans of this quote   

"We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting."

Pascal, Blaise on listening   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Criticism should be a casual conversation."

Auden, W. H. on criticism   

"Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature."

Auden, W. H. on convalescence   

"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."

Auden, W. H. on conceit
5 fans of this quote   

"All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation."

Auden, W. H. on sin   

"We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

Auden, W. H. on service
4 fans of this quote   

"Faith, as Paul saw it, was a living, flaming thing leading to surrender and obedience to the commandments of Christ."

Tozer, A. W. on faith
3 fans of this quote   

"There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy."

Pascal, Blaise on people
3 fans of this quote   

"May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?"

Auden, W. H. on faith
18 fans of this quote   

"The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age."

Auden, W. H. on age and aging
3 fans of this quote   

"In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure."

Auden, W. H. on action
3 fans of this quote   

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

Auden, W. H. on faces   

"Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do."

Auden, W. H. on genius
5 fans of this quote   

"God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word."

Auden, W. H. on god
4 fans of this quote   

"It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful."

Auden, W. H. on leisure   

"We must love one another or die."

Auden, W. H. on love
37 fans of this quote   

"We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility."

Auden, W. H. on love
32 fans of this quote   

"Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done."

Auden, W. H. on men   

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

Auden, W. H. on opera
3 fans of this quote   

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

Auden, W. H. on patience
8 fans of this quote   

"It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it."

Auden, W. H. on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice."

Auden, W. H. on politics
3 fans of this quote   

"To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention -- on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God -- that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer."

Auden, W. H. on prayer   

"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding."

Luther, Martin on faith   

"I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them. "

Pascal, Blaise on uncategorised   

"Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance faith."

Ruskin, John on faith
5 fans of this quote   

"The errors of faith are better than the best thoughts of unbelief."

Russell, Thomas on faith   

"My faith has no bed to sleep upon but omnipotence."

Rutherford, Samuel on faith   

"As the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists."

Salter, William on faith
3 fans of this quote   

"Eternal life does not begin with death; it begins with faith."

Shoemaker, Samuel M. on faith
5 fans of this quote   

"Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God."

Stott, John R. on faith
4 fans of this quote