W. H. Auden

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.

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

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.

People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.

a culture is no better than its woods

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.

Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

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

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

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

I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.