English-born poet (1907-1973)
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
W. H. AUDEN
"Hell", A Certain World: A Commonplace Book
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. AUDEN
"The Poet & the City", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. AUDEN
"In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
All pity is self-pity.
W. H. AUDEN
"Interlude: West's Disease", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
W. H. AUDEN
"September 1, 1939"
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. AUDEN
The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays