W. H. Auden

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

Acts of injustice doneBetween the setting and the rising sunIn history lie like bones, each one.

To save your world you asked this man to die;Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

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.

Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.

False enchantment can last a lifetime.

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

Accurate scholarship canunearth the whole offencefrom luther untill noethat has driven a culture mad.From what occured at linzwhat huge imago madea psychopathic god.i and the public knowwhat all schoolchildren learnthose to whom evil is donedo evil in return.

Evil is unspectacular and always human,And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

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.