451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.

To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won’t be flowers.

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

Life is a picnic on a precipice.