451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one’s living so as not to be a parasite and loving one’s neighbor.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Thoughts on his own death, like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: ‘As much neurosis as the child can bear.

Poetry is the only art people haven’t learned to consume like soup.

Now is the age of anxiety.

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