Top 435 Quotes & Sayings by W. H. Auden - Page 2

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

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

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

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.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.

To be free is often to be lonely.

Sincerity is technique.

But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.

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

I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.

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

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.

The lights must never go out, The music must always play

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.

It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.

Let all your thinks be thanks.

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.

We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.

The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.

Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.

Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.

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

All I have is a voice.

Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.