Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology. — 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
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 most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and,… — 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 Copy Share Image
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in… — 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
