Quotes by W.H. Auden

To save your world, you asked this man to die:Would this man, could he see you now, asked why?

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

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.

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrewsNot to be born is the best for manThe second best is a formal orderThe dances pattern, dance while you can.Dance, dance, for the figure is easyThe tune is catching and will not stopDance till the stars come down from the raftersDance, dance, dance till you drop.

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I dont know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

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

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

Evil is unspectacular and always human,And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....

The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.

And maps can really point to placesWhere life is evil now:Nanking. Dachau.

My second thoughts condemnAnd wonder how I dareTo look you in the eye.What right have I to swearEven at one a.m.To love you till I die?Earth meets too many crimesFor fibs to interest her;If I can give my word,Forgiveness can recurAny number of timesIn Time. Which is absurd.Tempus fugit. Quite.So finish up your drink.All flesh is grass. It is. But who on earth can thinkWith heavy heart or lightOf what will come of this?

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

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

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

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietz

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 partners run out of goods.But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason.Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection – the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others.

I write because I love to play with language.

The More Loving OneLooking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.How should we like it were stars to burnWith a passion for us, we could not return?If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I amOf stars that do not give a damn,I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.Were all stars to disappear or die,I should learn to look at an empty skyAnd feel its total dark sublime,Though this might take me a little time.