“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“How much must be forgotten out of love, How much must be forgiven, even love.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Some writers, even some poets, become famous public figures, but writers as such have no social status, in the way that doctors… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“A.E.Housman' No one, not even Cambridge was to blame (Blame if you like the human situation): Heart-injured in North London, he became… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Although you be, as I am, one of those Who feel a Christian ought to write in prose, For poetry is magic:… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“ Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness; You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures. He is… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“One cannot say that a major poet writes better poems than a minor; on the contrary the chances are that, in the… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over. from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton ” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence; Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to express my… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else. She does not know, any more than the others, that he is malevolent,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the pleasures of… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Human "nature" is a nature continually in quest of itself, obliged at every moment to transcend what it was a moment before.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Cassio is a ladies’ man, that is to say, a man who feels most at home in feminine company where his looks and good… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out, as they… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Our hunting fathers told the story Of the sadness of the creatures, Pitied the limits and the lack Set in their finished features; Saw… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
