W.H. Auden

“We must love one another or die”

“The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How shoul...”

“Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come...”

“If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.”

“I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something e...”

“The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute.”

“If you want romance, fuck a journalist.”

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the brigh...”

“Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human un...”

“O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.”

“Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”

“And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.”

“Poetry makes nothing happen.”

“Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.”

“The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among it's desperate and slain, The...”

“Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros an...”

“Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's gen...”

“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.”