457 Quotes by W. H. Auden

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

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.