Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. — W. H. Auden Art dance Copy Share Image
Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends… — W. H. Auden Bored Copy Share Image
Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events! — W. H. Auden Alive Copy Share Image
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has… — W. H. Auden America Copy Share Image
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or… — W. H. Auden Creation Copy Share Image
One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a… — W. H. Auden Age Copy Share Image
A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to… — W. H. Auden Ashes Copy Share Image
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes:… — W. H. Auden Beautiful Copy Share Image
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone… — W. H. Auden Eating Copy Share Image
If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing… — W. H. Auden Demand Copy Share Image
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot… — W. H. Auden Driven Copy Share Image
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves. — W. H. Auden Books Copy Share Image
Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience… — W. H. Auden Audience Copy Share Image
Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self. — W. H. Auden Blessed Copy Share Image
Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. — W. H. Auden Differences Copy Share Image
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today. — W. H. Auden Before sunrise Copy Share Image
I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation. — W. H. Auden Ability Copy Share Image
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon… — W. H. Auden China Copy Share Image
No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him. — W. H. Auden Empowering others Copy Share Image
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however… — W. H. Auden Choices Copy Share Image
I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his… — W. H. Auden Action Copy Share Image
