“O look, look in the mirror O look in your distress Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless O stand, stand… — 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
Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts? — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite… — 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
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that,… — 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
