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

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Mirror
Mirrors
Shadow
Unique
Impossible
Every
Men
Carries
Life
Carrie

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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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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.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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All I have is a voice.
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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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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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
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If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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