Quotes by W. H. Auden

''God is Love,'' we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

''Healing,'' Papa would tell me, ''is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.''

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.