Quotes By W. H. Auden

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

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

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 practicing it.

No hero is mortal till he dies.

In 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.

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

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.

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.