W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 11

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Love each other or perish.

W. H. Auden

Helping Others, Love Each Other

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

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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

W. H. Auden

Art, Believe, Simple

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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

W. H. Auden

Christmas, Friday, Easter

"Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry". Book by Anthony Hecht, p. 135, 2005.

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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.

W. H. Auden

Writing, Chance, Lifetime

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Proper names are poetry in the raw.
Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

W. H. Auden

Names, Nicknames

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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

W. H. Auden

Men, Average, Ivory Tower

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

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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

W. H. Auden

Dog, Children, Men

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Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.

W. H. Auden

Ties, Important, Homosexuality

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I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

W. H. Auden

Dancing, Grace, Should

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We must love one another or die

W. H. Auden

Love, Philosophy, Educational

"September 1, 1939" l. 88 (1939). In a 1955 printing of the poem Auden changed this to "love one another and die."

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To make one, there must be two.

W. H. Auden

Marriage, Two

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Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

W. H. Auden

Helping Others, Men, Earth

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One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. 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

Unique, Reality, Two

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Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.

W. H. Auden

Art, Writing, One Direction

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Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this is as it should be. But no man is perpetually in a passion and those states in which he is amused and amusing, detached and irreverent, if less important, are no less amusing. If there were no poets who, like Byron, express these states, Poetry would lack something.

W. H. Auden

Grief, Passion, Men

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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'

W. H. Auden

Writing, Trying, You Like It

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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?

W. H. Auden

Art, Desire, Doe

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Hunger allows no choice.

W. H. Auden

Choices, Hunger

'September 1, 1939' (1940)

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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.

W. H. Auden

Country, Men, Law

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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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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

W. H. Auden

Success, Patience, Work

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To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

W. H. Auden

Death, War, Men

Shield of Achilles (1955) "Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier"

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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.

W. H. Auden

Memories, Faces, Steps

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.35, DEBOLS!LLO

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Time will say nothing but I told you so.

W. H. Auden

Time, Told You So

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O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

W. H. Auden

Time, Conquer, Before Sunrise

1940 'As I Walked Out One Evening'.

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Born: February 21, 1907
Died: September 29, 1973
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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