Quotes from W. H. Auden

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

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

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

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.

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

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

'Healing, ' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

Life is a picnic on a precipice.

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

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

In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.

We are all here on earth to help others.

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life

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.

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

In life the loser's score is always zero.

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

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.