“Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer.”

— W. H. Auden, The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (1991)

About W. H. Auden

1907 – 1973

Anglo-American poet, author of "September 1, 1939".

“We must love one another or die.”

“O let not Time deceive you, you cannot conquer Time.”

“The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

“Go where he will, the wise man is at home, his hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.”

“The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.”

“Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”