451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.

We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.

The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.

I don’t think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.

Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

For the error bred in the bone of each woman and each man craves what it cannot have, not universal love but to be loved alone.

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.

Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.