W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

  W. H. Auden

  Pay, Told You So, Knows

  17 Copy quote

• Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.

  W. H. Auden

  Remember, Forget, Has Beens

  4 Copy quote

• The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.

  W. H. Auden

  Beautiful, Powerful, Writing

  10 Copy quote

• Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

  W. H. Auden

  Science, Wish, Events

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  20 Copy quote

• A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

  W. H. Auden

  Work, Thinking, Men

  29 Copy quote

• No being can make another one happy.

  W. H. Auden

  Happiness

  7 Copy quote

• I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Valentines Day, Rivers

  Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"

  30 Copy quote

• Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Relationship, Running

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"

  15 Copy quote

• We were put on this earth to make things.

  W. H. Auden

  Earth

  7 Copy quote

• The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.

  W. H. Auden

  Stars, Moon, Funeral

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.87, DEBOLS!LLO

  8 Copy quote

• Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Important, Desire

  10 Copy quote

• To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

  W. H. Auden

  Stars, Reason, Humans

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.28, Princeton University Press

  16 Copy quote

• Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.

  W. H. Auden

  Summer, Waiting, Important

  23 Copy quote

• I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

  W. H. Auden

  Love You, Pms, Tuesday

  6 Copy quote

• Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Beer, Quality

  The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays pt. 1 (1962)

  14 Copy quote

• I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.

  W. H. Auden

  Discovery, Meaning Of Life, Recognition

  9 Copy quote

• Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Recipes, Neurosis

  13 Copy quote

• The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Mistake, Science

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"

  8 Copy quote

• If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.

  W. H. Auden

  Soul, Hell, Ifs

  10 Copy quote

• Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.

  W. H. Auden

  Firsts, Facts, Get Up

  6 Copy quote

• As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

  W. H. Auden

  Political, Language, Corruption

  14 Copy quote

• Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.

  W. H. Auden

  Science, Skills, Degrees

  7 Copy quote

• I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Decision, Peaceful

  8 Copy quote

• Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Beautiful, Fall

  60 Copy quote

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