W. H. Auden
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. AudenGood can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. AudenAll sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. AudenWhat the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
W. H. AudenEvery autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. AudenWhen 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.
W. H. AudenDesire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
W. H. AudenHealth is the state about which medicine has nothing to say: Sanctity is the state about which theology has nothing to say.
W. H. AudenIt takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
W. H. AudenNo human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. AudenOne cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. AudenOf all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. AudenNo good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AudenSome books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. Auden''Healing,'' Papa would tell me, ''is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.''
W. H. AudenAll that we are not stares back at what we are.
W. H. AudenIn a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W. H. AudenIf time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. AudenEvil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. AudenThe 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.
W. H. AudenI'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
W. H. AudenIn times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. AudenActs of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
W. H. AudenI don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
W. H. AudenA verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. Auden
