W.H. Auden

“Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence; Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to…

— W.H. Auden

“As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else. She does not know, any more than the others, that he…

— W.H. Auden

“A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the…

— W.H. Auden

“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

“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

“Cassio is a ladies’ man, that is to say, a man who feels most at home in feminine company where his looks…

— W.H. Auden

“Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and…

— W.H. Auden

“In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out,…

— W.H. Auden

“Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.”

— W.H. Auden

“For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its…

— W.H. Auden

“Sorry, my dear, one mustn't be bohemian!”

— W.H. Auden

“Our hunting fathers told the story Of the sadness of the creatures, Pitied the limits and the lack Set in their finished…

— W.H. Auden

“After Portia has trapped Shylock through his own insistence upon the letter of the law of Contract, she produces another law by…

— W.H. Auden

“Iago’s treatment of Othello conforms to Bacon’s definition of scientific enquiry as putting Nature to the Question. If a member of the…

— W.H. Auden

“But round your image there is no fog, and the Earth can still astonish.”

— W.H. Auden

“O dear white children casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words, So gay against…

— W.H. Auden

“As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down…

— W.H. Auden

“Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, silently and very fast.”

— W.H. Auden

“Coleridge’s description of Iago’s actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly,…

— W.H. Auden

“Let each child have that's in our care. As much neurosis as the child can bear”

— W.H. Auden

“When I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams,…

— W.H. Auden

“My second thoughts condemn And wonder how I dare To look you in the eye. What right have I to swear Even…

— W.H. Auden

“Stagger onward rejoicing; And even then if, perhaps Having actually got To the last col, you collapse With all Atlantis shining Below…

— W.H. Auden

“Small tyrants, threatened by big, sincerely believe they love liberty.”

— W.H. Auden

“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