W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

  W. H. Auden

  Medicine, Medical, States

  20 Copy quote

• Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

  W. H. Auden

  Relationship, Goodness, Easier

  9 Copy quote

• A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Men, Dragons

  "Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56". Book edited by James Beasley Simpson, 1957.

  53 Copy quote

• It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Important, Age

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 250), 1972.

  8 Copy quote

• It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Self, People

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("Markings"), (p. 438), 1973.

  77 Copy quote

• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Music, People

  Quoted in Time, 29 Dec 1961.

  68 Copy quote

• In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

  W. H. Auden

  Life, Art, Beer

  11 Copy quote

• Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Air, Height

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

  21 Copy quote

• Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

  W. H. Auden

  Cities, Soul, Holes

  9 Copy quote

• When I am 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

  Mistake, Science, Drawing

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

  14 Copy quote

• The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.

  W. H. Auden

  Land, Bed, Cracks

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

  8 Copy quote

• Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

  W. H. Auden

  Travel, Artist, Difficult

  9 Copy quote

• God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, God, Children

  12 Copy quote

• Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny Friendship, Funny Best Friend, Differences

  31 Copy quote

• A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Writing, Poetry

  57 Copy quote

• Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
  Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Dance, Stars

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.106, DEBOLS!LLO

  68 Copy quote

• And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

  W. H. Auden

  Heart, Bears, Forgotten

  1936 'Night Mail', written to accompany a documentary by the Post Office Film Unit.

  31 Copy quote

• The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

  W. H. Auden

  Hero, Law, Suffering

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.

  15 Copy quote

• To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.

  W. H. Auden

  Fairy Tale, Tales, Hunts

  10 Copy quote

• Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, People, Poetry

  4 Copy quote

• The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

  W. H. Auden

  Angel, Way, Fairytale

  11 Copy quote

• Criticism should be a casual conversation.

  W. H. Auden

  Criticism, Should, Conversation

  10 Copy quote

• All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

  W. H. Auden

  Leadership, Imagination, Quality

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays". Book by W. H. Auden. Chapter: "The Poet and The City", p. 84, 1962.

  9 Copy quote

• He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Death, Song

  "Funeral Blues" l. 9 (1936)

  22 Copy quote

• The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

  W. H. Auden

  Practice, Justice, Politics

  11 Copy quote

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