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 Copy Share Image
It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it.… — 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 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
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing… — W. H. Auden 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 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
