W. H. Auden Quotes, Thoughts and images

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.

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

No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.

The lights must never go out, The music must always play

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.

All that we are not stares back at what we are.

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.

Let all your thinks be thanks.

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

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

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.

Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say

To be free is often to be lonely.

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.

Sincerity is technique.

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.