Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious. — W. H. Auden Civilization Copy Share Image
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone. — W. H. Auden Cathedrals Copy Share Image
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged — W. H. Auden Accusation Copy Share Image
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse’s flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates… — W. H. Auden Desire Copy Share Image
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist. — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why? — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared… — W. H. Auden America Copy Share Image
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing… — W. H. Auden Business Copy Share Image
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your… — W. H. Auden Heart Copy Share Image
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet:… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to… — W. H. Auden Barter Copy Share Image
Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses… — W. H. Auden Archaeology Copy Share Image
In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means;… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in… — W. H. Auden Books Copy Share Image
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the… — W. H. Auden Boys Copy Share Image
Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It has been said that a poem should not mean but be. This is not quite accurate. In a poem, as distinct… — W. H. Auden Books Copy Share Image
The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice… — W. H. Auden Belief Copy Share Image
At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every… — W. H. Auden Automobile Copy Share Image
