457 Quotes by W. H. Auden

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.