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All pity is self-pity.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Pity
Self

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To make one, there must be two.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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