[ w. h. auden Quotes ]

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
[ Love ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
27 votes

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
[ Teachers and Teaching ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
12 votes

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
[ Books - Reading ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
10 votes

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
[ Music ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
28 votes

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
[ Sin ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
9 votes

Criticism should be a casual conversation.
[ Critics and Criticism ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
15 votes

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
[ Evil ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
30 votes

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
[ Fame ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
30 votes

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
[ America ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
21 votes

Healing, Papa would tell me, is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.
[ Convalescence ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
28 votes

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
[ Faces ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
23 votes

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
[ Opera ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
29 votes

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
[ Games ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
31 votes

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
[ Hell ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
16 votes

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.
[ Poetry and Poets ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
30 votes

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
[ Names ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
26 votes

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
[ Books - Reading ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
23 votes

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
[ Mind ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
23 votes

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
[ Death and Dying ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
28 votes

We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
[ Service ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
27 votes

We must love one another or die.
[ Love ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
26 votes

You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.
[ Sex ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
22 votes

You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
[ Relationships ]
W. H. Auden

 

   
28 votes