The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
Not to be born is the best for man.

W.H. Auden

More information about this quote

Topic

Desire The human condition

Author

W.H. Auden

Source

Death's Echo

Medium

Poem

Language

English

Time

1937 1930s 20th century

Occupation

Poet Writer

From

United Kingdom Europe

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Auden, W. H. Death's Echo. 1937.

Illustrated Quote

A quote by W.H. Auden about desire: “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. Not to be born is…”
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A quote by W.H. Auden about desire: “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. Not to be born is…”
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A quote by W.H. Auden about desire: “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. Not to be born is…”
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Related Quotes

Below are one or more quotes that share at least one tag with the quote at the top of the page

Another quote by W.H. Auden

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our table.

W.H. Auden

More information about this quote
Topic
Nature of evil Evil

Author

W.H. Auden
Source
Herman Melville
Medium
Poem
Language
English
Time
1940 1940s 20th century
Authentication Score 3
Citation

Auden, W. H. "Herman Melville." Another Time. Faber and Faber/Random House, 1940.

Another quote from the 1930s

Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

T.S. Eliot

More information about this quote
Topic
Nature of life Life
Speaker
Sweeney

Author

T.S. Eliot
Source
Fragment of an Agon
Language
English
Time
1932 1930s 20th century
Authentication Score 3
Citation

Eliot, T. S. "Fragment of an Agon." Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama. Faber & Faber, 1932.

Another quote about The human condition

The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Buy The Fugitive at Amazon Buy The Fugitive at Amazon
More information about this quote
Topic
Existential solitude Connecting with others Isolation The human condition

Author

Marcel Proust
Source
The Fugitive In Search of Lost Time
Medium
Novel
Genre
Modernist literature
Language
French
Time
1922 1920s 20th century
Authentication Score 2
Original Citation

Proust, Marcel. Albertine disparue [Albertine Gone]. Paris: Gallimard, 1927.

Current Citation

Proust, Marcel. The Fugitive, edited and translated by Peter Collier. Penguin Classics, 2021.