451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.

I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

For time is inches And the heart’s changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.

There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow.

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter’s waking thoughts.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.