W. H. Auden

Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties.…

— W. H. Auden

To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

— W. H. Auden

Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz…

— W. H. Auden

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

— W. H. Auden

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the…

— W. H. Auden

We are all here on earth to help others.

— W. H. Auden

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

— W. H. Auden

There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think…

— W. H. Auden

To ask the hard question is simple.

— W. H. Auden

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

— W. H. Auden

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

— W. H. Auden

Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life.

— W. H. Auden

The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of…

— W. H. Auden

And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her…

— W. H. Auden

The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.

— W. H. Auden

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

— W. H. Auden

“Slowly we are learning, We at least know this much, That we have to unlearn Much that we were taught, And are…

— W. H. Auden

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians…

— W. H. Auden

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its…

— W. H. Auden

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.

— W. H. Auden

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all,…

— W. H. Auden

Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.

— W. H. Auden

In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.

— W. H. Auden

See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

— W. H. Auden

As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our…

— W. H. Auden