W. H. Auden Quotes About Mothers

Quotes about: Mothers

• Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Writing, Language

• Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Mistake, Drama

• The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Heart, Sleep

• The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Father, Taken

• A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Writing, Political

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 251), 1972.

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