The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear. — 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
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties.… — 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 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 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 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… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true… — W. H. Auden 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 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… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all --… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the… — 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
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
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden Copy Share
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. — W. H. Auden Copy Share
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
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
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. — W. H. Auden Copy Share
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
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
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the… — W. H. Auden Copy Share
Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral — W. H. Auden Copy Share
