Quotes by W. H. Auden

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.

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.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I dont know.

Art is born of humiliation.

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

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 practicing it.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.”

“The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.”

“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.”