W. H. Auden Quotes
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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. And she doesn't like slavish devotion - then she lies.
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A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.
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You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
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In all technologically 'advanced' countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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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 is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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It's 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.
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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All pity is self-pity.