W. H. Auden Quotes

People should know each other because they want to, because they have things in common.

All things are in common among friends.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

Every social need, such as the need for friendship, must be a party to its own satisfaction: I cannot passively find my friend as a ready-made friend; a ready-made human being he may be, but his friendship for me I must help to create by my own active resolve.

The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good.

A man with few friends is only half-developed; there are whole sides of his nature which are locked up and have never been expressed. He cannot unlock them himself, he cannot even discover them; friends alone can stimulate him and open him.

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.

The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends... . In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, "It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team.

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.

Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselves-and accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think we're okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to us-for various reasons, at various levels of intensity-they enrich the quality of our emotional life.

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse

We live in community, and we're created in community. We're created out of the unity of two people, and then we're made into a family. It's just inherent in who we are.

The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.

I love when people work together who know each other very well. Some of my favourite movies are people who are close friends or families.

We don't really make friends, they make us.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

Friendship is given us by nature, not to favor vice, but to aid virtue.