Wystan Hugh Auden Quotes

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

May it not be that, just as we 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

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

When one has great gifts, what answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise them.

As a rule it was the pleasure haters that became unjust.

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.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

To ask the hard question is simple.