W. H. Auden

Words are for those with promises to keep.

— W. H. Auden

Time will say nothing but I told you so...

— W. H. Auden

No being can make another one happy.

— W. H. Auden

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

— W. H. Auden

To ask the hard question is simple.

— W. H. Auden

Now is the age of anxiety.

— W. H. Auden

All the literati keep An imaginary friend.

— W. H. Auden

In life the loser's score is always zero.

— W. H. Auden

The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.

— W. H. Auden

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

— W. H. Auden

Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

— W. H. Auden

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

— W. H. Auden

Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.

— W. H. Auden

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

— W. H. Auden

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

— W. H. Auden

“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.”

— W. H. Auden

Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

— W. H. Auden

Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.

— W. H. Auden

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends…

— W. H. Auden

Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

— W. H. Auden

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

— W. H. Auden

O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've…

— W. H. Auden

There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.

— W. H. Auden

Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling…

— W. H. Auden

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

I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I…

— W. H. Auden

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus,…

— W. H. Auden

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask,…

— W. H. Auden

It is axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive…

— W. H. Auden

Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a…

— W. H. Auden

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only…

— W. H. Auden

It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe…

— W. H. Auden

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

One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in…

— W. H. Auden

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

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

That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion…

— W. H. Auden

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

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in…

— W. H. Auden

Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the…

— W. H. Auden