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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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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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A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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Hunger allows no choice.
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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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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...
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
W. H. Auden