W. H. Auden Quotes

Those to whom evil is done,
do evil in return

a culture is no better than its woods

In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Thoughts of his own death, like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Although you be, as I am, one of those
Who feel a Christian ought to write in prose,
For poetry is magic: born in sin, you
May read it to exorcies the Gentile in you.

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.

We cannot be deaf to the question: 'Do I love this world so well that I have to know how it ends?

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Time the refreshing river." <p> And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge,<p>"Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene. Descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."

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

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one
Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.