W. H. Auden Quotes (156 Quotes)

Their fate must always be the same as yours, To suffer the loss they were afraid of, yes, Holders of one position, wrong for years.

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

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.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content; That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace when there was war, he went.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate.

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

Five minutes on even the nicest mountain; Is awfully long.

America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

Art is born of humiliation.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are shaggy dog stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.

Does God judge us by appearances I Suspect that He does.

Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian creed in public.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

Nobody knows what the cause is, Though some pretend they do; It's like some hidden assassin; Waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, And men when they retire; It's as if there had to be some outlet; For their foiled creative.

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

This great society is going smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods; A culture is no better than its woods.

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read; The Hunter's waking thoughts.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

Private faces in public places; Are wiser and nicer; Than public faces in private places.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock, Weed the garden, wind the clock; Remember the Two.

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

Poetry makes nothing happen, it survives In the valley of its saying.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood; Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, Dreading to find its Father.

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

No hero is mortal till he dies.

When I try to imagine a faultless love; Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur; Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

All that we are not stares back at what we are.

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice . . .

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.