Quote #88

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

More from Wystan Hugh Auden

  1. I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed.…
  2. We are all on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for, I can't imagine.
  3. A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which …
  4. Minus times minus equals plus, The reason for this we need not discuss.
  5. It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, 'What should I write at the ag…
  6. 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 pho…
  7. The curious delusion that some families are older than others.
  8. One can only blaspheme if one believes.

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