W.H. Auden: The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
W.H. Auden: Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W.H. Auden: Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W.H. Auden: God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W.H. Auden: It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
W.H. Auden: 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.
W.H. Auden: Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W.H. Auden: 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.
W.H. Auden: It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
W.H. Auden: A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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