More from Wystan Hugh Auden

  1. Look, stranger, on this island now.
  2. A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
  3. Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many peop…
  4. The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
  5. In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.
  6. Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
  7. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
  8. At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical…

All Wystan Hugh Auden quotes