W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 10

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• Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

  W. H. Auden

  Clever, Book, Cooking

  6 Copy quote

• You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.

  W. H. Auden

  Relationship, Beauty, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.

  W. H. Auden

  Sensual, Wish, Desire

  32 Copy quote

• The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, New Year, Holiday

  "Happy New Year" by Ligaya Mishan, www.newyorker.com. December 29, 200.

  66 Copy quote

• As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

  W. H. Auden

  Healing, Unjust, Pleasure

  5 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

• 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

• 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

• Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Winning, Drunk

  10 Copy quote

• Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

  W. H. Auden

  Looks, Crafts, Leap

  4 Copy quote

• All pity is self-pity.

  W. H. Auden

  Self, Self Pity, Pity

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Interlude: West's Disease"), (p. 243), 1962.

  4 Copy quote

• Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.

  W. H. Auden

  Our World, Body, Claims

  6 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

• Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

  W. H. Auden

  Language, Metaphorical, Humans

  4 Copy quote

• Words are for those with promises to keep.

  W. H. Auden

  Promise

  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

• The Ogre does what ogres can,
  Deeds quite impossible for Man,
  But one prize is beyond his reach,
  The Ogre cannot master Speech:
  About a subjugated plain,
  Among its desperate and slain,
  The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
  While drivel gushes from his lips.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Hands, Doe

  "August 1968". Poem by W. H. Auden,

  5 Copy quote

• One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.

  W. H. Auden

  Discovery, Wish, Important

  4 Copy quote

• In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.

  W. H. Auden

  Prayer, Unique, Class

  8 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

• 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

• 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

• No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

  W. H. Auden

  Life, Believe, Writing

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"

  10 Copy quote

• Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.

  W. H. Auden

  Blessed, Self, Force

  4 Copy quote

• A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Creativity, Desire

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