W. H. Auden quotes

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. (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
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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
No hero is mortal till he dies.
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
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self. (W. H. Auden)
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
W. H. Auden
The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
W. H. Auden
Now is the age of anxiety. (W. H. Auden)
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
It is. . . axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
W. H. Auden