“Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.”
Travel
“Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.”
ArtAll Quotes by W. H. Auden
“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.”
Love“The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.”
Death“Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.”
Marriage“Learn from your dreams what you lack.”
Dreams“Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.”
Art“When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.”
Science“Now is the age of anxiety.”
Age“Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.”
Relationship“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”
Death“History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.”
History“May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?”
Faith“'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'”
Art“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”
Love“It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.”
Art“Art is born of humiliation.”
Art“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
Love“Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.”
Music“A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”
Art“Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.”
Health