There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad. — W. H. Auden Envy Copy Share Image
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply… — W. H. Auden Chance Copy Share Image
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and… — W. H. Auden Change Copy Share Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters. — W. H. Auden Character Copy Share Image
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You… — W. H. Auden Age Copy Share Image
There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be… — W. H. Auden Chaste Copy Share Image
I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus,… — W. H. Auden Darkness Copy Share Image
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask,… — W. H. Auden Age Copy Share Image
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.” — W. H. Auden Intense Copy Share Image
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup. — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? — W. H. Auden Inspirational Copy Share Image
Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you... — W. H. Auden Cat Copy Share Image
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety. — W. H. Auden Anxiety Copy Share Image
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
