W. H. Auden Quotes
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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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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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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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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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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They never forgot That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
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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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Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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All pity is self-pity.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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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.
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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.