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
A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around… — 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
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a… — 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
