Sensible People Quotes by W. H. Auden

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

— W. H. Auden

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

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

— W. H. Auden

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

— W. H. Auden

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

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

— W. H. Auden

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

“Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return”

— W. H. Auden

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

— W. H. Auden

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

— W. H. Auden

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

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

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the…

— W. H. Auden

Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral

— W. H. Auden

To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.

— W. H. Auden