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
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
The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams — 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
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they… — 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
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
Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays… — 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
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they… — 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
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
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
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
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
