Quotes by W. H. Auden

The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be impatient craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because however successful he may be in overcoming them he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.

Choice of attention-to pay attention to this and ignore that-is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.

About suffering they were never wrong The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

When we do evil We and our victims Are equally bewildered.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

A professor is someone who talks in someone elses sleep.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

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

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

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.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

Now is the age of anxiety.