W. H. Auden Quotes

Quotes about:

• Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

  W. H. Auden

  Respect, Civilization, Diversity

  114 Copy quote

• You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.

  W. H. Auden

  Beautiful, Eye, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• Words are for those with promises to keep.

  W. H. Auden

  Promise

  4 Copy quote

• Life is a picnic on a precipice.

  W. H. Auden

  Picnics, Life Is, Precipice

  20 Copy quote

• Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.

  W. H. Auden

  Faces, Wiser

  'Orators' (1932) dedication

  4 Copy quote

• Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.

  W. H. Auden

  Past, Men, History

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "D. H. Lawrence"

  10 Copy quote

• If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Wicked, Age

  4 Copy quote

• Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Missing, Religion

  7 Copy quote

• It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.

  W. H. Auden

  Stupid, Long, People

  4 Copy quote

• What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

  W. H. Auden

  Poet, Said, Reader

  6 Copy quote

• To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

  W. H. Auden

  God, Prayer, Children

  7 Copy quote

• Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.

  W. H. Auden

  Hell

  42 Copy quote

• But once in a while the odd thing happens
  Once in a while the dream comes true
  And the whole pattern of life is altered
  Once in a while, the moon turns blue

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Moon, Blue

  17 Copy quote

• We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Funny, Helping Others

  W H Auden (1981). “Antæus”, Ecco Press

  127 Copy quote

• Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

  W. H. Auden

  Language, Metaphorical, Humans

  4 Copy quote

• The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

  W. H. Auden

  Truth, Important, Want

  55 Copy quote

• We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

  W. H. Auden

  Change, Religion, Growth

  Wystan Hugh Auden (2011). “The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue”, p.105, Princeton University Press

  112 Copy quote

• The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

  W. H. Auden

  Dirty, Writing, Islands

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Writing"), (p. 22), 1962.

  5 Copy quote

• No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Leadership, Joy

  57 Copy quote

• A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

  W. H. Auden

  Real, Book, Reading

  27 Copy quote

• Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

  W. H. Auden

  Evil, Politics, Imagine

  "A Certain World". Book by W. H. Auden, 1970.

  18 Copy quote

• All that we are not stares back at what we are.

  W. H. Auden

  Crazy, Mad, Staring

  20 Copy quote

• The lights must never go out,
  The music must always play

  W. H. Auden

  Light, Play

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

  18 Copy quote

• Love each other or perish.

  W. H. Auden

  Helping Others, Love Each Other

  "Tuesdays with Morrie". Book by Mitch Albom, 1997.

  6 Copy quote

• What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

  W. H. Auden

  Exercise, Answers, Should

  11 Copy quote

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