"How much must be forgotten, out of love,
how much must be forgiven, even love."

W.H. Auden, from: “Canzone” (via art-of-drowning)

(Source: learningfromthehands)

"The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night."

W.H. Auden

W. H. Auden by Richard Avedon

"

So much for Art. Of course Life had its passions too;

The student’s flesh like his imagination
Makes facts fit theories and has fashions too.
We were the the tail, a sort of poor relation

To what that debauched, eccentric generation
That grew up with their fathers at the War,

And made new glosses on the noun Amour.

"

W.H. Auden

"Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time."

W. H. Auden, from “The More Loving One” (via proustitute)

watercolournights:

That this world of fact we love
Is unsubstantial stuff:
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.

from: “The Sea and the Mirror,” by W.H. Auden 

(Source: learningfromthehands)