457 Quotes by W. H. Auden

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.

The lights must never go out, The music must always play

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.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

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.

Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.