Wystan Hugh Auden Quotes

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

The golden age of opera, from Mozart to Verdi, coincided with the golden age of liberal humanism, of unquestioning belief in freedom and progress… To say that operas are more difficult to write does not mean that they are impossible. This would only follow if we should cease to believe in free will and personality […]

I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say, Is a keen observer of life, The word “Intellectual” suggests straight away A man who’s untrue to his wife.

Now you can’t say about loving your neighbor that you have no talent for it. It’s required of everyone. No, it isn’t harder for one than another. It only looks harder to the individual who is confronted with his own problems and can’t see someone else’s. Of course, the human race as a whole is […]

Though I believe it sinful to be queer, it has at least saved me from becoming a pillar of the establishment.

The bishop-elect of Hong Kong Had a dong that was ten inches long. He thought the spectators Were admiring his gaiters When he went to the gents’. He was wrong.