Quotes from W. H. Auden

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep

There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

Cathedrals, Luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.

Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.

Choice of attention, to pay attention to this and ignore that, is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.

Choice of attention ... 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.

What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

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.

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.

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.

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.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

When we do evil, We and our victims Are equally bewildered.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.

To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?