Quotes By W. H. Auden
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
W. H. Auden
Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
W. H. Auden
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
W. H. Auden
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?
W. H. Auden
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
W. H. Auden
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. Auden
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. Auden
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden