W.H. Auden Quotes

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e....

There are good books which are only for adults.There are no good books which are only for children.

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced society is not, strictly speaking, a political one, that is today, it is not concerned with human beings...

To make one, there must be two.

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

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.

A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrewsNot to be born is the best for manThe second best is a formal orderThe dance's pattern, dance while you can.Dance, dance, for the figure is easyThe...

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.

All we are not stares back at what we are.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.

Small tyrants, threatened by big,sincerely believethey love liberty.