W. H. Auden: Quotes about love

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

W. H. Auden

Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170

Love , Passion , Personality

“Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

Assessing St. Augustine's perspectives in "Augustus to Augustine", p. 37
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i. e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.

Love , God , Motivation , Hell

“To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.”

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 81–92

Love , Beauty , Summer , Perfection

“How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

W. H. Auden

The More Loving One (1957)

Love , Star , Passion

“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”

W. H. Auden

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

Love , Mountain , Star , Singing

“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.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Notes on the Comic", p. 372
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Love

“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.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Love

“Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.”

W. H. Auden

First published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)
Source: Autumn Song (1936), Lines 17–20

Love , Travel , Mountain

“For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 62–66

Love , Error , Universe

“Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

Love , Children , Lie , Beauty

“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 78–88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.

Love , Hunger , Lie

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.”

W. H. Auden

Source: Funeral Blues (1936)

Love

“Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
In which a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.”

W. H. Auden

After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics (1961), lines 9–16

Love , Marriage , Lovers , Kiss