W. H. Auden - Poems

42 Sourced Quotes

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Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.

W. H. Auden
The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among it's desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.

W. H. Auden
Money cannot buy
The fuel of Love
But is excellent kindling.

W. H. Auden
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

W. H. Auden
To the man-in-the street, who, I'm sorry to say
Is a keen observer of life,
The word intellectual suggests right away
A man who's untrue to his wife.

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

W. H. Auden
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

W. H. Auden
God bless the USA, so large, So friendly, and so rich.

W. H. Auden
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

W. H. Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

W. H. Auden
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

W. H. Auden