Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible. — W. H. Auden Communication Copy Share Image
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no… — W. H. Auden Cashiers Copy Share Image
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a… — W. H. Auden Doctor Copy Share Image
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse’s flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist. — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates… — W. H. Auden Desire Copy Share Image
Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in… — W. H. Auden Argument Copy Share Image
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing… — W. H. Auden Demand Copy Share Image
If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes:… — W. H. Auden Beautiful Copy Share Image
A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to… — W. H. Auden Ashes Copy Share Image
To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not… — W. H. Auden Generations Copy Share Image
The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read… — W. H. Auden Craftsmanship Copy Share Image
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a… — W. H. Auden Amateurs Copy Share Image
The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon,… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in… — W. H. Auden Afterlife Copy Share Image
A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters. — W. H. Auden Character Copy Share Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and… — W. H. Auden Change Copy Share Image
As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. — W. H. Auden Corruption Copy Share Image
I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire. — W. H. Auden Beauty Copy Share Image
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions. — W. H. Auden Attention Copy Share Image
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of… — W. H. Auden Child Copy Share Image
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat… — W. H. Auden Food Copy Share Image
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply… — W. H. Auden Chance Copy Share Image
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I… — W. H. Auden Apples Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods. — W. H. Auden Country Copy Share Image
