A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.” — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about… — 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
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of… — 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
God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Slowly we are learning, We at least know this much, That we have to unlearn Much that we were taught, And are… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is… — 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
