457 Quotes by W. H. Auden

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.

Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940.

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.

Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality; without art, no notion of liberty.

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.