Quotes by W. H. Auden

“Do not be afraid of showing your affection. Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate. Men are more helped by sympathy, than by service; love is more than money, and a kind word will give more pleasure than a present.”

“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”

“Most people would rather give than get affection.”

“Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.”

“Music is the best means we have of digesting time.”

“A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”

“Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.”

“A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.”

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”

“Ill love you, dear, Ill love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.”

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me”

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

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them can make me laugh.”

“lay your faithless head upon my arm”

“Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.”

“But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.”

“When spring comes the grass grows by itself.”

“Give up what appears to be doubtful for what is certain. Truth brings peace of mind, and deception doubt.”

“Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time, and make two lovers happy.”