W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 8

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• About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

  W. H. Auden

  Suffering, Sorrow, Window

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

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• Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Writing, Character

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• Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Science, Simple

  A CertainWorld "Behaviorism" (1970)

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• One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Criticism, Reviews

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"

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• The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.

  W. H. Auden

  Law, Broken, Forgiving

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("The Prince's Dog"), (p. 201), 1962.

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• Drama is based on the Mistake.

  W. H. Auden

  Mistake, Drama

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• Art is born of humiliation.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Born, Humiliation

  In Stephen Spender World Within World (1951) ch. 2

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• The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

  W. H. Auden

  Taken, Criticism, Salt

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• There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Firsts, Study

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• The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

  W. H. Auden

  Death, Men, Gmos

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.148, DEBOLS!LLO

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• May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

  W. H. Auden

  Race, May, Have Faith

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• It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Money, Writing

  Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword

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• Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

  W. H. Auden

  Song, Clever, Stupid

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• We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Country, Children

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• Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.

  W. H. Auden

  Luxury, Soul, Hull

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• If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.

  W. H. Auden

  Queens, Character, Home

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• The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.

  W. H. Auden

  Ideas, Catholic, Religion

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• Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Interesting, Suffering

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• The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Men, Taught

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• A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.

  W. H. Auden

  May, Vices, Common

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Don Juan"), (p. 403), 1962.

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• It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

  W. H. Auden

  America, Scary, Too Much

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• Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.

  W. H. Auden

  Doe, Torture, No Nonsense

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• If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.

  W. H. Auden

  Real, Feelings, Quality

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• The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists

  W. H. Auden

  Men, World, Action

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

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• Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.

  W. H. Auden

  Drama, Practice, Community

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