W. H. Auden

Quotes

• “Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on h...”
• “May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of th...”
• “Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because however successful he may be in overcoming them he ...”
• “Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage,...”
• “Choice of attention-to pay attention to this and ignore that-is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer....”
• “About suffering they were never wrong The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place ...”
• “My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get i...”
• “Choice of attention ... is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible ...”
• “Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation a mental or physical ...”
• “Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical ba...”
• “The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be ...”
• “In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the...”
• “Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he i...”
• “What the mass media offer is not popular art but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food forgotten a...”
• “It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is rightly more important that he eat th...”
• “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 ...”
• “I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing ...”
• “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 ...”
• “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 p...”
• “The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe but each has to believe ...”
• “Among those whom I like or admire I can find no common denominator but among those whom I love I can: all of them mak...”
• “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full...”
• “Choice of attention to pay attention to this and ignore that is to the inner life what choice of action is to the oute...”
• “Any marriage happy or unhappy is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance however passionate.”
• “History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.”
• “Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.”
• “We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.”
• “No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”
• “Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.”
• “Cathedrals Luxury liners laden with souls Holding to the east their hulls of stone.”
• “Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.”
• “Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.”
• “To be happy means to be free not from pain or fear but from care or anxiety.”
• “Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.”
• “The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.”
• “If we really want to live we'd better start at once to try.”
• “Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.”
• “When we do evil We and our victims Are equally bewildered.”
• “A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.”
• “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”
• “Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”
• “Music is the best means we have of digesting time.”
• “Learn from your dreams what you lack.”
• “Art is born of humiliation.”
• “Now is the age of anxiety.”