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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.

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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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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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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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
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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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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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