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

"Any one who attempts to translate from one tongue into another will know moods of despair when he feels he is wasting…"

"No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him."

"Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a wom…"

"As the poet W. H. Auden wrote: "Truth, like love and sleep, resents/Approaches that are too intense." I call this Aud…"

"If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his sp…"

"In a century of the symbolist, surreal, and absurd, W. H. Auden is essentially a poet of the reasonable."

"Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic."

"Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but…"

"Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or …"