W. H. Auden Quotes

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don't like.
For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it.

And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.

But once in a while the odd thing happens,
Once in a while the dream comes true,
And the whole pattern of life is altered,
Once in a while the moon turns blue.

The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

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

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

Like love we don't know where or why
Like love we cant compel or fly
Like Love we often weep
Like Love we seldom keep

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

To make one, there must be two.

Poetry makes nothing happen.