Quotes from W. H. Auden

Put the car away; when life fails What's the good of going to Wales?

From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow.

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

All pity is self-pity.

In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh.

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving allBut will his negative inversion, be prodigal.

Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe. Poetry can do a hundred and one things, delight, sadden, disturb, amuse, instruct—it may express every possible shade of emotion, and describe every conceivable kind of event, but there is only one thing that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being and for happening.

At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe'sWe drank our liquor straight,Some went upstairs with Margery,And some, alas, with Kate.

Let us honor if we canThe vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters! Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop!

If thou must chooseBetween the chances, choose the odd;Read the New Yorker; trust in God;And take short views.

The greater the love, the more false to its object,Not to be born is the best for man;After the kiss comes the impulse to throttle,Break the embraces, dance while you can.

About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters: how well they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a windowOr just walking dully along.

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining atNew styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Intellectual disgraceStares from every human face,And the seas of pity lieLocked and frozen in each eye.

Every farthing of the cost,All the dreaded cards foretell,Shall be paid, but from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought,Not a kiss nor look be lost.

O plunge your hands in water,Plunge them in up to the wrist;Stare, stare in the basinAnd wonder what you've missed.The glacier knocks in the cupboard,The desert sighs in the bed,And the crack in the tea cup opensA lane to the land of the dead.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are contentThat he held the proper opinions for the time of year;When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.

Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.

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

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survivesIn the valley of its saying where executivesWould never want to tamper

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.