Quotes from WH Auden

As writing is one of the desperate professions, it has universal appeal, especially for those not engaged in it.

I write because I love to play with language.

Three quarters of these people know Instinctively what ought to be The nature of society And how they'd live there if they could. If it were easy to be good, And cheap, and plain as evil, how, We all would be its members now...

As the poets have mournfully sung, Death takes the innocent young, The rolling-in-money, The screamingly-funny, And those who are very well hung.

these days of exotic splendour may stand out in each lifetime like marble mileposts in an alluvial land

O source of equity and rest... Disturb our negligence and chill, Convict our pride of its offence In all things, even penitence, Instruct us in the civil art Of making from the muddled heart A desert and a city where The thoughts that have to labor there May find locality and peace, And pent-up feelings their release, Send strength sufficient for our day, And point our knowledge on its way.

They lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.

Time will say nothing but I told you so. Time only knows the price we have to pay.

We must love one another and die