W.H. Auden Quotes
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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.
Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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.
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.
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.
A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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 in the street.
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
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.
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
