451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

To ask the hard question is simple.

The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.

Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place;.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.

Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.