W. H. Auden Quotes

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

We were put on this earth to make things.

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.

If you want romance, fuck a journalist.

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.