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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.
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
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
W. H. Auden
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
W. H. Auden
Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.
W. H. Auden
And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
W. H. Auden
In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. Auden
As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
W. H. Auden
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden
The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
W. H. Auden
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
W. H. Auden
There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden
Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. Auden
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden
There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
W. H. Auden
All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
W. H. Auden
Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
W. H. Auden
The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
W. H. Auden
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
W. H. Auden