To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety. — W. H. Auden Anxiety Copy Share Image
What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? — W. H. Auden Inspirational Copy Share Image
Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup. — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away. — W. H. Auden Gun Copy Share Image
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games. — W. H. Auden Class Copy Share Image
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized… — W. H. Auden Children Copy Share Image
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to… — W. H. Auden Barter Copy Share Image
Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that,… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet:… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and,… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice… — W. H. Auden Belief Copy Share Image
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
