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The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

— W. H. Auden The Shield of Achilles (1955)

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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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

The Shield of Achilles (1955)

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

Let us honor if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.

Poems (1933)

All W. H. Auden quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: W. H. Auden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.