W. H. Auden

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

"A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason."

"No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games."

"Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject."

"When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won."

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

"Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so."

"If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. ... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni."

"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."

"Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places."

"I'm beginning to lose patience With my personal relations: They are not deep, And they are not cheap."

"The sky is darkening like a stain, Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers."

"Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The Hunter's waking thoughts."

"I see it often since you’ve been away: The island, the veranda, and the fruit; The tiny steamer breaking from the bay; The literary mornings with its hoot; Our ugly comic servant; and then you, Lovely and willing every afternoon."

"At the far end of the enormous room An orchestra is playing to the rich."

"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order,Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door.Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient's against her, but she’s on time.Past cotton-grass and moorland border, Shovelling white steam over her shoulder."

"Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from girl and boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or to visit relations, And applications for situations, And timid lovers' declarations, And gossip, gossip from all the nations."

"Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one."

"Every day America's destroyed and re-created, America is what you do, America is I and you, America is what you choose to make it."

"In a garden shady this holy lady With reverent cadence and subtle psalm, Like a black swan as death came on Poured forth her song in perfect calm: And by ocean’s margin this innocent virgin Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer, And notes tremendous from her great engine Thundered out on the Roman air.Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited, Moved to delight by the melody, White as an orchid she rode quite naked In an oyster shell on top of the sea."

"Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions To all musicians, appear and inspire: Translated Daughter, come down and startle Composing mortals with immortal fire."

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

"The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories."

"Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done."

"Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing."

"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."

"Only in rites can we renounce our oddities and be truly entired."

"Let us honor if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one."

"Put the car away; when life fails What's the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do?"

"If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try; If we don’t it doesn’t matter, we’d better start to die."

"To ask the hard question is simple, The simple act of the confused will."

"Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all But will his negative inversion, be prodigal: Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch Curing the intolerable neural itch, The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy, And the distortions of ingrown virginity."

"Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart."

"And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie."

"Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead."

"Let the florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty’s conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on."

"Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea."

"O what is that sound which so thrills the ear Down in the valley drumming, drumming? Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming."

"O it's broken the lock and splintered the door, O it's the gate where they're turning, turning; Their boots are heavy on the floor And their eyes are burning."

"Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on."

"Cold, impossible, ahead Lifts the mountain's lovely head Whose white waterfall could bless Travellers in their last distress."

"A shilling life will give you all the facts."

"Fish in the unruffled lakes Their swarming colours wear, Swans in the winter air A white perfection have, And the great lion walks Through his innocent grove; Lion, fish and swan Act, and are gone Upon Time's toppling wave."

"We must lose our loves, On each beast and bird that moves Turn an envious look."

"August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier."

"And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene, O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.""

"On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our feverAre precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruinAre projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army."

"To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, The photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle."

"The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon."

"My head looks an egg upon a plate, My nose is not too bad, but isn’t straight; I have no proper eyebrows, and my eyes Are far too close together to look nice."