“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“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.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“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.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”
“A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
“The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.”
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"A small grove massacred to the last ash,
An oak with heart-rot, give away the show:
This great society is going to smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
"History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology."
― W.H. Auden (1907-1973)