In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them. – W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know. – W. H. Auden
Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel. – W. H. Auden
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. – W. H. Auden
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. – W. H. Auden
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. – W. H. Auden
Choice of attention – to pay attention to this and ignore that – is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be. – W. H. Auden
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. – W. H. Auden
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why? – W. H. Auden
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. – W. H. Auden
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes. – W. H. Auden
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
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age. – W. H. Auden
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb. – W. H. Auden
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own. – W. H. Auden
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. – W. H. Auden
