W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 16

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• How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Winning, Paper

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• The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Song, Stars

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• Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.

  W. H. Auden

  Mad, Acting, Actors

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• Now the leaves are falling fast,
  Nurse's flowers will not last;
  Nurses to their graves are gone,
  And the prams go rolling on.

  W. H. Auden

  Flower, Fall, Nurse

  "Autumn Song". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1936.

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• The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.

  W. H. Auden

  Mistake, Gone, Mets

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• Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

  W. H. Auden

  Running, Fire, Squares

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• Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.

  W. H. Auden

  Lying, Vegas, Bed

  'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 2

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• Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Lying, Poetry

  "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 42 (1940)

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• The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.

  W. H. Auden

  Country, Tree, Soul

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• Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

  W. H. Auden

  Running, Father, Loneliness

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Poet, Humiliated

  Entry for April 11, 1979. "Stephen Spender, Journals 1939-1983". Book by Stephen Spender, 1985.

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• With the farming of a verse
  Make a vineyard of the curse

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Vineyards, Farming

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.150, DEBOLS!LLO

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• To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Apples, Giving

  1936 'Letter to Byron', pt.3, stanza 20, collected in Poems, Essays, Dramatic Writings 1927-1939 (1977).

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• About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.

  W. H. Auden

  Suffering, Masters

  "Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 1 (1940)

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• One rational voice is dumb: over a grave
  The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.
  Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
  And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

  W. H. Auden

  Death, Cities, Voice

  "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" l. 109 (1939)

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• A shilling life will give you all the facts.

  W. H. Auden

  Giving, Facts

  'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 13

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• When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Wish, Looks

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Postscript: Christianity & Art"), (p. 461), 1962.

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• What living occasion can,
  Be just to the absent?

  W. H. Auden

  Absent, Occasions

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• An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Self, Ego

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• Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

  W. H. Auden

  Years, Uniforms, Talent

  1940 'The Novelist'.

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• Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.

  W. H. Auden

  Civilization, Greek, Conscious

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• In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.

  W. H. Auden

  Zero, Winning, Games

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• What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Professors, Poetry Is

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• Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

  W. H. Auden

  Food, Cooking, Murder

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• The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

  W. H. Auden

  Pride, Hands, People

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