Collected Poems Quotes

“Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Beloved, we are always in the wrong,
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice. ”
― W.H. Auden, The Collected Poetry Of W. H. Auden

“The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have;
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The hunter's waking thoughts.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Were all stars to disappear and die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
—W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“What living occasion can,
Be just to the absent?”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems