Quotes from W. H. Auden

All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall; And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have; Not universal love But to be loved alone.

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.

Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return

Fate succombs many a species. One alone jeopardizes itself.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Slowly we are learning, We at least know this much, That we have to unlearn Much that we were taught, And are growing chary Of emphatic dogmas; Love like Matter is much Odder than we thought.

Words have no word for words that are not true.

Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling on.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

The surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast.

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

O look, look in the mirror O look in your distress Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart