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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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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.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
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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.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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