Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self. — W. H. Auden Autobiography Copy Share Image
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my… — W. H. Auden Death Copy Share Image
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy… — W. H. Auden Aristocracy Copy Share Image
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into… — W. H. Auden Art Copy Share Image
An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a… — W. H. Auden Business Copy Share Image
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest… — W. H. Auden Clever Copy Share Image
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to… — W. H. Auden Affection Copy Share Image
“I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is… — W. H. Auden Character Copy Share Image
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or… — W. H. Auden Creation Copy Share Image
One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a… — W. H. Auden Age Copy Share Image
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has… — W. H. Auden America Copy Share Image
Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Apples Copy Share Image
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero. — W. H. Auden Football Copy Share Image
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities,… — W. H. Auden Aphrodite Copy Share Image
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that… — W. H. Auden Talent Copy Share Image
All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am." — W. H. Auden Happiness Copy Share Image
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know. — W. H. Auden Earth Copy Share Image
