Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace,… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the… — 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
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. — W. H. Auden 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 is as… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. — W. H. Auden 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 believe It… — W. H. Auden 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
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or… — 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 return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
