W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 15

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• One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

  W. H. Auden

  Character, Thinking, Personality

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• Defenceless under the night
  Our world in stupor lies;
  Yet, dotted everywhere,
  Ironic points of light
  Flash out wherever the Just
  Exchange their messages:
  May I, composed like them
  Of Eros and of dust,
  Beleaguered by the same
  Negation and despair,
  Show an affirming flame.

  W. H. Auden

  Lying, Night, Dust

  "September 1, 1939" l. 92 (1939) See George H.W. Bush 3

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• We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

  W. H. Auden

  Sunny Afternoon, Shy, Sunny Day

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• Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.

  W. H. Auden

  Compassion, Evil, Return

  "September 1, 1939" l. 19 (1939)

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• To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.

  W. H. Auden

  Sorry, Men, Intelligent

  New Year Letter (1961) note to line 1277

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• Few can remember
  clearly when innocence came
  to a sudden end,
  the moment at which we ask
  for the first time: Am I loved?

  W. H. Auden

  Firsts, Innocence, Remember

  W. H. Auden, Katherine Bucknell (2003). “Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928”, p.28, Princeton University Press

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• Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Style, Suffering

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• Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

  W. H. Auden

  Selfish, Stupid, Voice

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• To ask the hard question is simple.

  W. H. Auden

  Optimistic, Simple, Brainstorming

  Poems (1933) no. 27

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• Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

  W. H. Auden

  Death, Philosophical, Sound

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• The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.

  W. H. Auden

  Faith, Believe, Unique

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• Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

  W. H. Auden

  Change, Heart, Shining

  'Sir, No Man's Enemy' (1955)

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• Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

  W. H. Auden

  Country, Novelists, Roles

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("A Poet of the Actual"), (p. 266), 1973.

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• At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.

  W. H. Auden

  Latin, Years, Greek

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Reading"), (p. 12), 1962.

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• The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

  W. H. Auden

  Stars, Animal, Looks

  'Spain' (1937) p. 12

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• August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.

  W. H. Auden

  August, Islands, People

  'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 30

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• Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.

  W. H. Auden

  Sleep, Arms, Faithless

  "Lullaby" l. 1 (1940)

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• Poetry makes nothing happen.

  W. H. Auden

  Poet, Happens

  "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 36 (1940) See Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Percy Shelley 15; Twain 104

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• Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

  W. H. Auden

  Needs, Earth, Mankind

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.258, DEBOLS!LLO

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• The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.

  W. H. Auden

  Car, Assassins, Salad

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• The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Animal, Faces

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• I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

  W. H. Auden

  Jobs, Acting, Looks

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• Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Mountain, May

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• In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

  W. H. Auden

  Fall, Boys, Sky

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.122, DEBOLS!LLO

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• There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

  W. H. Auden

  Choices, Police, Citizens

  Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

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